Features
8 graphs
Coming Soon: example posters by students
Context: Whenever a school-wide walkout happens where teachers stay in the classrooms, I present a data FRQ about the theme of the walkout. The poster becomes extra credit for students who complete and present it. Choose your own minimum of graphs used.
Features
Time: 5 min share — 15 minute discussion
Response sheets (2 per page)
Large print pages of the graphs
Challenge question: what’s another way we could interpret this? can we trust the evidence here? what other effects could these phenomena have?
Sources
(see doc)
more coming soon
Time: 60 minutes
Goals:
Identify the opportunity cost of a decision.
Apply the concepts of scarcity, trade-offs, and opportunity cost to a decision by a hypothetical high school student (Franklin) who had to choose how to use his after-school time among three alternatives.
Explain the rationale for the recommended decision.
Video: explanation, timer
Do now
Group instructions
recommendations to an imaginary high schooler)
Do Now
Video: What is Opportunity Cost?
Opportunity Cost…in Minecraft? (or village settlement if students are unfamiliar with survival sandbox games)
Franklin’s Decision
Time: 60 min
Goal: Model an ocean-atmosphere interaction and explain how carbon dioxide gas diffuses into water, causing the water to become more acidic.
Includes:
Lab worksheet (instructions, questions, etc.)
Slides for Exploratorium’s Ocean Acidification In A Cup
Videos with timers, safety review, and lab procedure demo, applications to coral bleaching, etc.
Note to self: (To Do) add inquiry-driven portion for students to devise questions together (requires more chemistry than mere carbon cycling stations activity)
Pre-Assess in Forms w/ video, what is evidence, what evidence is valid in Dad-Is-Alien argument
Breakout Room card sort of evidence from Mars Opportunity rover, 1 shared Doc https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Fa85BSs970inCMMQ6HdmS_SWtBx91Fx5-fFXW96y_Wc/edit?usp=sharing
Review Jay-Z CER & Formative (haha) assess 3 Ignoble CERs: https://forms.gle/mf4sv5WWsorQRq5u8
Revise Mars after gallery walk
CER breakout pairs for practice argumentation, scribing on 1 shared Doc https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VmlYn5Z7ND2tYSr3e-uSyGi59dbtl_j8-95j5csCpWw/edit?usp=sharing
Gallery Walk, leave comments, freeze doc & assign individual re-write
Card sort mouse experiment variables 8. Learn how to write a testable question & design first experiment
I made an evidence-inference card sort based on evidence the Opportunity rover photographed on Mars. I assign each breakout room to a slide, students work together to sort ir/relevant evidence for the claim. I include the slide here. The sorting is the background image and the cards are actual images, so there's no typing or accidentally rewording things. Template slide at end for your edits.
Some guidance: Duplicate Slide 1 as many times as you have breakout rooms. Set Permission to Edit.
Option: Save completed slide as JPEG and email or submit as Form to instructor. Some framing: I follow up with a Do After that asks them to identify claim, evidence, and reasoning in several paragraphs. They also have a series of evidence-inference polls where we discuss the reasoning behind each answer.
Time: 55 minutes + 70 minutes
Goals:
Identify the claim, evidence, and reasoning in a scientific explanation.
Identify relevant evidence to support a scientific explanation, using real NASA photos from Mars.
Do Now
Video: Dad is an alien!
Slides: Explaining Science - CER
CER: Penny
Solo: Analyze
Pairs: Peer Review
Formative (CER: Analyze; Mars check-ins); Summative: Mars Spoken Explanation
Do Now
Video: Are cats liquid or solid?
Slides: Claim - Evidence - Reasoning
Activity: Identifying Relevant Evidence…on Mars!
Pairs: Peer Review
Learning Design Group, Reteaching Loop: Understanding the Role of Relevant Evidence in Supporting a Claim
You are free to copy and adapt all the teaching resources on this page. I appreciate feedback on what to keep/toss/expand/scaffold.
Tie 4 to 5 strings to 1 rubber band. Do this for each group.
Instructor stacks cups into a random setup (e.g. pyramid, etc.)
Each group member takes a string. Without talking, the group must use the rubber band to arrange their own stash of cups into the instructor’s setup.
Increase complexity and repeat.
Too easy? Have only one group member see the target stack. Set a timer.
Reflect: How did talking affect your other abilities? Were you still able to accomplish the task? What helped you build the tower?
Full resource document with lesson background and cutouts here.
An excerpt from the document, which contains many variations for different age groups, etc:
Rules
1. This exercise must be played in complete silence. No talking.
2. You may not point or signal to other players with your hands in any way.
3. Each player must put together their own circle. No one else may show a player how to do it or do it for them.
4. This is an exercise in giving. You may not take a piece from another player, but you may give your pieces, one at a time, to any other members of your group, and other group members may give pieces to you. You may not place a piece in another person's puzzle; players must complete only their own puzzles. Instead, hand the piece to the other player, or place it beside the other pieces in front of them.
[Instructions]
Now you may take the pieces out of your envelope and place them in front of you, colored side up. This is a group task, and you will have 10 minutes to make your circles.
Remember, the task is not finished until each of you at your table has a completed circle in front of you. When all of you have finished, raise your hands.
Reflect: What was most challenging? What was easiest? What did you like the most about this activity? What did you like the least about this activity? What messages do you think this activity might be trying to say about working in groups?
GoogleDoc of Do Now, Instructions, & Exit Tickets, and photos of game pieces coming soon.
Full resource page with lesson background here
GoogleDoc of lesson for my classroom coming soon.
GoogleDoc adaptation of it for my classroom setup coming soon
copyleft notice: You are free to copy and adapt all the teaching resources on this page.
I appreciate feedback on what to keep/toss/expand/scaffold.
Time 50-60 minutes
Goal Identify and explain different types of cognitive bias
Do Now
Video: Why do human brains love fake news?
Recognizing types of bias
Notes (graphic organizer included)
Review Quiz
Poster: Examples & Prevention
Exit Ticket
Formative
Do Now
Graphic organizer
Exit Ticket
Summative
Poster (group)
on research by kris traub (chainsawsuit)
Investigate: Question 2, Activity 2 by Digital Civics Toolkit
coming soon
Time: 5 min review — 15 minute discussion
4 graphs, 3 questions per graph: identifies x-, y-axis & increase/decrease
Response sheets (6 per page), graphs (2 per page)
Challenge question: what else? why? how do we know?
Features
Time: 5 min share — 15 minute discussion
Response sheets (2 per page)
Challenge question: what’s another way we could interpret this?
Sources
Anscombe’s Quartet (wikipedia)
more coming soon
Features
Time: 5 min review — 15 minute discussion
4 tasks
Response sheets (6 per page), graphs (2 per page)
Challenge question: what else? why? how do we know?
What advice would have been useful for me to take before I entered college? My college roommate's little brother is entering Harvard next year. As a responsible big sister, she's asked our friends what advice we could offer him. My answer boiled down to a few points that I realized are true about life as well.
1. People matter. Talk to EVERYONE. Classmates, professors, janitors, presidents, lecturers, museum curators, the people in the kitchen (very important for quality of life), campus police, people sitting next to you. Introduce yourself and ask them how their day is. Remember their names or something they find interesting about themselves. Share your dreams (your actual dreams, not what sounds nice to people) and listen to theirs. It'll go a long way in making you feel comfortable and at home on campus. There's something interesting about everyone, and having a strong sense of community will lend you confidence on bad days when you're trudging around the Yard.
2. "Requirements" don't matter as much as you think. Go for what you want. Don't listen to anyone telling you what the "rules" or "usual" path someone follows through a concentration or requirement fulfillment are. You can petition your profs, tutors, proctors, etc. for almost anything, so long as you show you are prepared, you've done your research, and they won't have to babysit you. Go for what you want, not what you think you ought to do or might find "useful" in the future, because Harvard's going to give you great peers and a great analytical skillset, so whatever you're passionate about, you're going to be awesome at it regardless of what "useful" classes you didn't take.
3. Regardless of authority or tenure, people who know you more intimately can be more helpful. Professors make the class, but sometimes, for larger classes like government, TFs make the class. Many of the TFs in gov't and law have awesome careers elsewhere; get to know them if you can, and they can hook you up with great gigs if they see you're passionate. College gives you a wild menagerie of options--sometimes you'll need direction more than you'll need "contacts."
4. Seek help. Find a mentor, any mentor. Doesn't have to be in your concentration, year, hall, House, class, whatever. Just find someone you can talk to, who can help you grow or sift through your whirlwind of experiences.
5. Take the time to indulge in curiosity. Shop classes you're interested in but probably aren't or won't take because you don't have enough interest or time. Grab the syllabi and check out the assigned list of readings, and if you're intrigued, go and read the books to give yourself a taste.
Good luck to all the prefroshies, and to the rest of us.
