Help me give my students headphones so that they can do interactive chemistry simulations and watch science videos on their chromebooks.
$400 goal
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month
This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
I teach at a small charter school in Hayward, where 75% of the students will be the first in their family to go to college. They are smart and inquisitive, and once I pique their curiosity, they ask the most incredibly insightful questions and stay after class to ask me how I know that absolute zero is really the lowest possible temperature.
These students do their best work when they are able to discuss concepts and ask a lot of questions.
They love doing inquiry-based labs in which they need to work out the logic on their own. They also respond very well to learning in more hands-on and practical ways rather than through a lot of lectures and reading. They were not very familiar with academic vocabulary, scientific concepts or scientific procedures at the beginning of the year, so I have put a lot of emphasis on building their comfort level with all three. They are very good at helping each other when they realize that one of their classmates is confused. It's hard to imagine a group of students that are more rewarding to teach!
My Project
I tried something new last week. I gave students self-guided assignments in google classroom to learn about scientific concepts. They watched a series of videos on their concept, completed computer simulations to learn about it in a very interactive manner, and then completed a small group assignment answering questions that required a lot of critical thinking to apply their new knowledge to observable phenomena and laboratory applications.
These interactive assignments were a phenomenal success!
The students really delved into the videos, rewatching them multiple times to figure out every detail. They tried the simulations on their own and then showed each other their favorite features and discussed what they learned. And then they collaboratively worked to answer the questions. They got stuck a lot and came to me for help. I gave them hints about what to focus on and then sent them back to figure it out on their own. My students worked harder than I've ever seen them work before on these assignments. I'll definitely be creating a lot more of these next year.
The only real problem we had with these assignments is that we didn't have anywhere near enough headphones for all of the students in the class to use while watching the videos during the independent work time. I borrowed headphones from two other classes but still didn't have enough. So I asked the students who didn't have headphones to watch the videos at a very low volume. This worked well enough to get us through the assignment, but it was not optimal. Next year I'd love to have enough headphones for all of my students when I give these assignments.
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