Most class periods see students interacting as they practice varying levels of physics & chemistry problems. Students take turns working problems with each other & for each other on the board. My goal is to allow them to save & track their accomplishments toward mastery of the course content.
Students in my classes come ready for a challenge.
They know that expectations are set high enough for them to to have to reach for them, but they are achievable. They aren't all A and B level students, but they come ready & willing to learn. Many admit after the first week or two of school that they chose chemistry & physics because they knew they would learn how to DO stuff, they wouldn't just learn STUFF!
We go into the lab & work problems as often as possible, because "chemistry & physics are best learned by doing". My students need to feel comfortable in the lab & they need to feel comfortable working problems that demonstrate their mastery of the subjects
My students are very diverse. Both physics and chemistry draw from all 3 grade levels (10-12) & from our diverse mixture of ethnic groups.
The school is in a relatively rural area, however we draw some students from a nearby metropolitan area. Many of my students will continue their education after high school.
My Project
For many of us, we remember copying problems on a piece of paper while our teacher wrote the problems on the board. Then we'd be given a problem of our own to work. Sometimes we'd get back to going over the problem & other times we didn't. Regardless, most of the time our teacher had to erase the already worked problem in order to work the next.
We never got to see how we progressed towards mastering the concepts. Even today, when we work problems on the board & students take out their technology devices all they get is a still shot of the problem & the work.
The document camera being requested gives students the ability to demonstrate mastery of concepts by doing problems individually or in groups during class, & the ADDED BONUS of being able to revisit the processes outside of class through the video recording features.
The confidence they obtain in knowing they are working towards mastery & the interaction with each other turns a classroom into a student-focused experience.
A concern with education today is how to make sure we provide all students with more than just a classroom learning experience.
Students who need reinforcement because they just haven't quite "got it" yet, or students who missed class because of illness or extra curricular activities will benefit by having a way to access the material covered during class.
The document camera will let us create videos that can be accessed, paused & rewound as needed to help students master concepts & problems.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mrs. Lchs and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
