msjen

(I forgot to renew my paid account, so I can't actually make a poll, but...)

1. Do you know what "running text" is?

2. Have you ever worked in publishing?

Thanks, people of the interwebs.

ETA: The reason I ask these things is because sometimes I lose sight of what's jargon and what's commonly used terminology. I'm trying to write something for a wide audience, so I wasn't sure if I used the term "running text" if people would know what I meant. You are my completely un-random sample of whether people would know what this term means, so thanks!!!

Yesterday, I finished the Astronomy Unit That Would Not Die.

I've worked on this thing off and on for three years, and this was the last unit that I was to see through from "Hey, we should write a unit about space" through "Here is a published 600-page teachers' guide and nine books." This also marks the end of the Big Curriculum Project for the next several months, and our future at the moment is kind of uncertain.

Of course, there are millions of little questions to answer and things to fix before the astronomy unit is published; we will soon be supporting teachers in implementing our existing units in a wide variety of settings across the country; we're writing grant proposals to (ideally) get us funded to write more units; and there are many questions still unanswered and a infinite amount of writing and research left to do. Hopefully, this project that I have poured my heart and soul into (not to mention my employment) will continue.

Still, it's the end of an era. And, dare I say (even though I may get my life outside of work back, if you all will still have me), it's bittersweet.

"Tell your students to imagine they were led blindfolded to a very large building."


(This, coupled with the imaginary placement of their nose on the side of this theoretical building, apparently helps kids visualize why the Earth looks flat even though it's round. And so, with that vaguely disturbing sentiment, the Astronomy Unit That Would Not Die is back.)

Chemistry unit #2, done! Thank god. That took what, four months, when it was supposed to take two? No more splitting atoms with scissors. We can all sleep a little easier.

Next on my plate: Astronomy Unit That Would Not Die Returns. Um, whoo-hoo.

I just came across this unfortunately-worded sentence in one of our chemistry lessons:

"Tell students to cut the atoms apart with scissors."

Uh...okay. Duck and cover, kids!

(What the author actually meant was "Tell students to cut apart the circles of paper that represent atoms." But hey, that's less fun.)




ETA: I found another one. A truly challenging task: "Ask students to find the atoms in baking soda. Confirm that they have the correct atoms by asking them to hold up sodium, hydrogen, carbon, and three oxygens."

I doubt anyone will ever notice this (in fact, it probably goes into my ongoing list of items designated "If Any Teacher Ever Notices This, I Will Personally Give Them Five Bucks"), so maybe I'll leave the kids to their atom splitting and call it a night.

In one of our recent studies, we posed the question: How can models help scientists understand the Solar System?

One student wrote:

"The model can get a book for the scientist to read."

(Thankfully, that was on the pretest. If I can say nothing else about our instruction, I do know that this particular confusion was almost certainly cleared up.)



Similarly, a colleague found an amusing typo in one of our teacher's guides:

"Point out to students that one of the important things scientists do is mack models."

Now I know why you science types enjoy your work so much.

One chemistry unit down (only two weeks late! I rule!), one to go. The one I just finished had a lot of heady conceptual visualization for fourth graders. ("Everyone put on your 'nanovision goggles' and imagine what's happening with the molecules.") The one I will start revising tomorrow actually has 'splodey things. Okay, it's only somewhat reactive and safely contained 'splodey, of course, but still more excitement than usual. Apparently once you hit the age of nine, handling chemicals is okay, but at the age of seven you can't even read the word 'alcohol' without people going off the deep end. Whatever. I don't make the rules and I have no idea who does, but as long as someone gets to mix chemicals in a baggie, I'm happy.

And so it goes on the Big Curriculum Project. If anyone is harmed in the making of this unit, I'll be sure to let you know.

We were asked to remove a picture of hot dogs from one of our books because hot dogs contain nitrates which are Bad for Children.

I can think of a much better reason we shouldn't show fourth graders a picture of hot dogs, but whatever.

So far, 2009, I like you a lot. You have been full of friends and family and baked goods, and this weekend promises more.

Now, back to work. This chemistry unit isn't going to revise itself, people. However, this unit is actually really fascinating (chromatography! extreme phase change! blowing styrofoam bits across the room with a fan!) and has been -- gasp -- fun to work on. Wonders never cease.

I just turned in the curriculum unit I've been writing (along with five other people -- it takes a lot of bodies to churn out 600+ pages), off and on, for almost three years.

DONE. DONE. DONE!!! I get my weekends back! Yay!!!!!

Surprisingly, although it is flawed in many ways, I actually think it's kind of awesome and that it actually teaches some valuable things. It's the first thing I've ever written that I'm genuinely proud of. I suppose that's saying something.

And now, beer.

I have been trying to make sense of this sentence:

If your skin absorbs too much light, you will get louder.

Um. False?

The scary thing is I think I wrote that in the first place. Perhaps this was one of those don't-don't-drink-and-write moments.

Can you find the Very Bad Idea in this sentence from one of our teacher's guides?

You may want to assign students to take the temperature of a variety of things or places, such as: the classroom, a cup of cold water, a cup of hot water, an ice cube, their own body, the inside of a refrigerator, the inside of a freezer, the inside of an oven, etc.

I can't believe this got past the safety police at the publishing company (the same people who wouldn't let us show a picture of a stapler).

There is a recurring step in our teacher's guides that begins: "Partners discuss relationships."

Now, what this actually means (as the text goes on to explain) is "pairs of students have a discussion about the relationships among set of vocabulary words they have written on cards in front of them." It does not, of course, mean that the third graders should be informing the kid that sits next to them that they want to spend recess with other people, or that they should be evaluating whether or not they want to sit next to the same kid long-term, in the fourth grade. It does not even mean that third graders should be talking about whether they "like" or "like like" each other. But it sure sounds like it to me.

However, I am apparently the only developer who thinks it's amusing to instruct third graders to do this. I know because I got a lot of weird looks today when I tried to explain why I was laughing at the teacher's guide yet again. Oh well.

For the past few days, my colleagues and I have been attempting to encapsulate and quantify the characteristics of decent fourth grade writing into one neat 4x5 grid that fits on one sheet of paper. Needless to say, this has been an exceptionally difficult and probably ultimately futile task. However, eager undergraduates are awaiting the thrilling summer job of scoring three thousand of these papers, so encapsulate and quantify we must.

The good news about this endeavor is that I have gotten the chance to read many, many samples of student writing over the past few days. Most kids in our study attempted valiantly to answer the question, albeit with varying degrees of success. For our research purposes, that's wonderful. What a rich source of interesting information. However, I instead present to you winners in categories that are not listed on the official rubric.


The question we posed was: How does light interact with materials? Describe three different examples.

Category: The Walls Are Melting Again
Winning Entry: When light goes to an object it interacts with it that means it's like talking to it. And if it wants to reflect it goes over to another object and tells it to bounce off. Then it can decide if it wants to absorb.

Category: ...And Did I Mention the Rocks?
Winning Entry: Light refracts off of rocky surfaces. Such as a rocky road, a mountain, or a pile of rocks. There are many surfaces of many rocks.

Category: Beautiful Analogy. You Still Fail.
Winning Entry: They go together like ketchup and French fries.

Category: Thanks for Letting Us Down Easy
Winning Entry: I'm so sorry, I cannot remember. But, light is something I like.

Category: When You Can't Think of Anything Else...Hamsters!
Winning Entry: I know I learned it last year but I totally lost it. I think my hamster stopped running and it died. I need to upgrade to a new one.

Category: FTW!*
Winning Entry: Scientific people are evil.


This all gives me hope that, should I ever go back to teaching, I will find that things have not changed all that much -- children will still be thinking about hamsters, imagining that inanimate things are talking, and cursing the people that are making them write these damn essays.




*This one seems to cover both meanings of that particular acronym.

Still going through teacher feedback. Almost done (and I sincerely hope it wasn't as tedious to teach the unit it has been to put together the feedback). But, I just came across a truly mystifying comment:

Question: Please comment on your students' response to this session.
Answer: I have a Christmas tree in my room.

UM. WHAT.




[edit]
Wow, and later on she said it again!

Question: How successful were students in conducting their small-group discussions?
Answer: This was a little difficult. I have a Christmas tree in my room.

I guess from this one could infer that the tree was distracting, but...seriously, WTF?

One of the wonderful things (yes, there are some) about my place of employment is that we are known for actually testing our curricula in actual classrooms with actual teachers and actual students. (Seriously, it's kind of horrifying to think of the number of programs on which school districts spend millions of dollars that do not do this.) After we go and teach the stuff ourselves to try it out, we then send every unit out for a national field trial. This essentially means that we mail some teachers a box of materials, a giant binder, and a bunch of tests -- cold turkey. In return, we get mountains of feedback about what worked and what didn't.

Typically, the original developers of a unit are not assigned to rewrite that same unit based on the teacher feedback. This is simply because it is human nature to become wedded to what one has written and to lose the ability to look at one's writing objectively after one has -- just for example -- spent half of the hours one was supposed to be on vacation on it, scribbled notes about it on bar napkins, or written large parts of it while nursing hangovers. One tends to get attached.

Despite this policy, however, I have been tasked with rewriting a unit for which I was one of the original developers. This means that for the past week I have been poring over feedback from teachers I have never met about curriculum materials I wrote during the first few months at my job. Some of the feedback is a little harsh, but I am trying hard not to take it personally. After all, I have had much worse, much more immediate feedback -- no one is throwing a chair at my curriculum. No one is vomiting on my curriculum. No one is running away from my curriculum. This is an improvement over my previous curriculum development attempts ("please, please, write down something. ANYTHING. Okay, just don't eat the paper and I won't call your parents").

The good news is that teachers, all in all, received almost everything pretty favorably. Students tested well in most areas, and appear to have learned a few things. I don't think we even made any students cry (although there were many unfortunate reports of groaning). However, there was one comment that truly slayed me:

Question: What would you change about this curriculum if you were to teach it again?
Answer: I would cut out all of the unnecessary language arts material*. Great science lessons!

Uhhh...what part of integrated science and literacy curriculum did you not understand??!?



* = everything I wrote

The Astronomy Unit That Will Not Die -- is dead! And we even turned it in on time. I think this is the first deadline I have ever made gracefully. This means that this is the first weekend since about February that I have not had to work.

So, why I am at home in front of the interwebs and not out celebrating my curricular victory? Because I seem to have come down with the stomach flu. The only celebrating I will be doing this evening is over managing to keep down toast.

NO FAIR.

The astronomy unit still will not die.

Two more weeks of this. If all goes well.

I love astronomy, but dear god, working on this unit has been torture. (In case you care, which you really shouldn't: I have been writing this unit since December, and it kind of sucked for a variety of reasons, but it was practically done. Then, the people in the editorial chain after me came along and rearranged everything. So I have been assigned to go back to working on it, rewriting things again, and it is highly confusing because everyone keeps changing everything. And there is a big drop-dead deadline with a three-million dollar grant attached to it and it must get done and be perfect. STABBY STABBY.)

Did we define the phrase "solar system objects"? How much do fourth graders know about comparative adjectives? How do you pronounce "Uranus?" Is it okay to say that moons are the only things that do not orbit the Sun, when in fact, they sort of orbit the Sun? These are the burning questions that fill my days. And nights.

When this stupid project is over, I am going to ingest enough beer to send my brain to Enceladus, which, in case you didn't know, is an icy and highly reflective moon of Saturn. You are all invited on my intergalactic journey.

Well, maybe not, but there will be rejoicing of some sort, dammit.

Dear Fellow Curriculum Developers,

I realize that I do not have a background in science. This is why part of my job is to read over what you have written and apply what is rapidly gaining the unfortunate moniker "The Jen Check." The Jen Check ensures that your prose is very clear and detailed, so that poor average elementary school teachers such as myself can finally understand, for example, why the moon has phases, which we were certainly taught at some point in an unhelpful way by some teacher who didn't get it either. And, I appreciate that I am in the unique professional situation of having my lack of knowledge be helpful.

However, when you have included a note to teachers entitled "To Avoid Confusion" -- that would be doing it wrong.

Thank you,

Ms. Jen

Today my boss started laughing hysterically when she read a series of steps from The Astronomy Unit That Will Not Die. She thought the text pretty much suggested that teachers should fondle objects sensually in front of the class. Now, I had previously read this many times (I didn't write it, I swear) and didn't see anything wrong with it. But, upon further reflection, I will concede that it's fortunate that this activity is done with a globe and not, say, a melon.

Here's the passage:

1. Hold a globe in two hands, and move your hands in a curving motion around it, following its spherical shape.

2. Make a model in the air. Set down the globe and then make the same motions in the air, as if following the curve of a globe with your hands.

3. Ask all students to hold out their hands and pretend to feel around the shape of their own imaginary globe. After a few moments, say, “Now imagine that your sphere is bigger, as big around as you can reach. Show with your hands how big your model is.” (Caution students not to bump into neighbors with their hands.)

4. Ask students to move their hands to follow the shape of an even larger imaginary sphere.

And it concludes with a discussion of models, which is also sort of funny if you think of the other meaning of the word:

5. Point out that the sphere they made in the air is a kind of a model that helps us think about the Earth’s shape and size. An advantage of the air model is that you can easily make it bigger or smaller. Sometimes a model can be a picture or explanation in your mind, called a mental model. Mental models can be very useful.

I told her she should be happy we were providing explicit instruction.