Collaboration Invitation

[Colin Matheson]

I was thinking about the Lesson Study model of collaboration and I wanted to see if anyone wanted to try and work together on a unit which we would try out in our classes. I have evolution, plants, a few human systems, and vertebrate diversity (I usually do this outside of class) left to cover.
I was thinking we could pick a week or two and discuss what activities and labs work best. Then we would try them out and discuss how they went. I would be willing to film my class to provide more food for discussion.
It would be even cooler if part of our collaboration involved having our students collaborate (a voicethread, wiki, or discussion board). Anyways, if you think you might want to work together on a week or 2 or lessons, let me know.
I am using Campbell 7th edition, but I don't think that different texts would limit our ability to teach the same activities.

[David Knuffke]

I'm set to do plants starting in about two weeks. It's a unit that I really want to rework anyway. Interested? I'm also using Campbell 7th.

[Lisa]

Can I jump in too? I am starting plants next week and I would love to collaborate on the unit.

[Colin Matheson]

I will be ready to work on a bit of a Plant unit starting next week. Let's start small and pick one topic/major concept to work on.
Options of the top of my head: Transpiration, Flowers (seeds and fruits), Alternation of generation, Plant Diversity, Photosynthesis, Response to environment/hormones, Plant tissues and organs, ....

[David Knuffke]

I'm a week behind you. We have midterms next week. I give fungi a day and then into plants on Tuesday of the week after. A day on basic phylogeny and general characteristics. Maybe something about diversity, tissues/organs or flowers?

What do you think?

[Colin Matheson]

I usually spend 3 weeks on plants and photosynthesis. Here is my 3 week overview, my exact day by day timings are always a little vague, because I never really remember how long it takes to cover particular chapters :-)

Week 1: Plant structures and photosynthesis
chapters 35,37,10
lab-drawing structures in prepared slides

Week 2: Transpiration and Flowers
chapters 36,38
lab-AP transpiration lab

Week 3: Flowers and Hormones
chapters 38,39
lab-flower dissection, and rate of photosynthesis lab with leaf disks (add extraction of pigments and analysis of absorption spectra in different plants/algae)
I am going to do a fruit salad lab this year to analyze different types of fruits
I also bought dwarf fast plants and hope to use gibberlic acid (which I don't have yet) to show plant hormones. I was also thinking of running a fuit ripening demo to show how ethylene gas works.

I have the students cover the types of plants/fungi/algae by having them make a diversity of life wiki.

[Jessi Van Der Volgen]

For the fruit ripening lab, I just added a very simple mini lab this year.
Put a ripe banana and an unripe banana in a paper bag. Put 2 unripe bananas in another paper bag. Count the number of brown spots on the unripe banana (1 from each bag) over the course of a week. Students can discuss what factors need to be controlled, where in the classroom the bananas should be stored, etc.

Can you tell me more about how you do the diversity of life wiki?

[Colin Matheson]

I will start the paper bag lab today. Our wikis are essentially ongoing group reports. They have to cover the features of protists, fungi, mosses, ferns, gymnosperms, and angiosperms. Earlier in the year they did pages on invertebrates and we will finish with vertebrates. When they are done each group will have made a mini encyclopedia of life.
We have turnitin.com so I have them copy and paste their pages to make sure they are reading and synthesizing info and not just copying and pasting.
I am trying to work on how to increase collaboration on the pages. Right now students tend to just divide up the sections and work fairly independantly, except for some superficial editing.
We started using the wiki module on Moodle and have moved over to wikispaces. Neither is perfect, but they work.

Maybe your class would like to work with my class. We just started so they aren't that hot
http://goldenmonkeyclan.wikispaces.com/
http://biodragonclan.wikispaces.com/
http://tigerclan.wikispaces.com/
http://sharkclan.wikispaces.com/

[Colin Matheson]

It looks like we probably won't be able to pull off too much collab in the upcoming weeks as we are all starting our plant units. However, I would like to give it a go when we have more lead time. I would be interested in co-planning even a single day and then sharing feedback/student work/videos. AP teachers are often lone guns so PLC's are hard to find.

[Jen]

Colin,
I wasn't teaching AP this time last year - but if you are still interested in this, could we maybe try to work out details in the summer and collaborate? I'm stretched a bit thin right now with a few different activiites/clubs/community service things, but I am DONE with grad school, so will have time (and probably be bored) this summer. Let me know - would love to work with another AP teacher! The others in my county are relatively "hands-off" when it comes to collaboration :( and it does get kind of isolating...sigh.... Thanks!
Jen

[Colin Matheson]

This summer would be great. Maybe we can create a virtual online curriculum workshop. Sounds scary and formal, but I am sure it would be great to try and get as many teachers as wanted to, to share and co design some lessons. Using Skype and maybe set up a Moodle course and/or some shared wiki and/or google doc. I will add a reminder to my calendar to bug you again in a moth or two. Let me know if you have any ideas.