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April 4th, 2022 by Luann

Learning Anatomy through Collaboration, Part 4

Using what we learned (see Parts 1, 2, and 3, linked below) we connected the skeletal system, the muscular system, and the nervous system. Students chose a scenario involving the nervous system and prepared a 5-6 minute presentation describing the path a nerve impulse takes, starting (or ending) with a nerve impulse and ending (starting) with an action.  The scenario focused on the muscles and also included the role of the skeletal and muscular systems, including tendons and ligaments.Some students chose the same scenario they used in Part 2 – muscles, and added the nervous system.

Students were encouraged to choose any appropriate format to present their work, including but not limited to, a slide show, video, illustrations, graphics, a poster, or any other format they chose and discussed with me before proceeding. They presented their work to a small group.  The presentations were also linked to a Google doc that was shared with other students.  Students reviewed the work of 3 other students. Reviewers did not assign any type of score to other students’ presentations. This is was individual assignment, although students were encouraged to discuss their work and progress with others as they found helpful.  All their materials had to be readily accessed by anyone else in the class.

Here’s how students shared their work, from the Student Directions:

  • Place all materials in a new folder named Nervous System Assessment within your @Anatomy folder.Be sure the folder sharing is set so anyone within our school can view.
  • Add a document named Nervous System Collaboration – Lastname to the folder.
    • Write an “Explain to Me Like I’m 5” paragraph describing your project.
    • Ask for specific feedback on any part of your project.
    • Make this doc editable by anyone in our school.

Before leaving comments, we discussed how to best give helpful feedback. We listed some sentence starters:

  • I really liked…
  • ______ helped me understand _______
  • I have a question about….
  • I’d like to see more……
  • What I need to see to be more convinced is….

I wish I could share example projects, but they all had so much identifying info that I can’t do that. I can share links to the assignment docs.  Here they are:

The first 3 parts of this Learning Anatomy through Collaboration adventure:

September 6th, 2021 by Luann

Learning Anatomy through Collaboration, Part 1

We’ve been away from one another for far too long.

Talking over Zoom, email, feedback and peer edits on documents and drawings can only go so far.

Mink Intestines in Anatomy

Mink dissection – look at those intestines!

Most of the students in this Anatomy and Physiology class in our small rural school have been together for years, some since kindergarten. Some are related; in fact, this class of 14 students has two sets of twins.

To begin the year, we use the classic “Draw Yourself” lab, in which students pair up and one student traces the body outline of the second student on a large piece of posted paper. Students then label regions of the body, quadrants of the abdomen, and directional terms used for describing the body – anterior, posterior, dorsal, ventral, sagittal, for example.

The benefits of this work, as opposed to me lecturing and students memorizing:

  1. Students get acquainted, or re-acquainted, with one another.
  2. Students are actively working, that is, moving around and acquiring a kinesthetic introduction of the human body and the terms they will be using all year.
  3. While working on their creation, students see the terms in print, read the terms aloud, hear others say the terms, and write the terms. Over, and over.
  4. Students visit other groups to ask questions, give suggestions, and get ideas for their own work.
  5. And, importantly, students learn how others learn.

We will use these large paper bodies over and over, throughout the year.  Stay tuned.

May 11th, 2020 by Luann

Everything’s Changed

Three months ago, we went to school every day, concerned mostly about whether our shoes were cute and comfortable, our activities were engaging, and the copier and other technology were working.

Then, everything changed.

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April 19th, 2020 by Luann

COVID-19 Data Sites

I’m making no claims or assumptions of the validity of any of these sites. I’m watching all of them with interest. As with any graph, don’t be fooled by flashy lines until you look closely at the labels and values on the axes.

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April 3rd, 2020 by Luann

Document Handling from a Phone or Chromebook

Some online platforms have built-in submission options for students and that’s nice. I prefer students to simply organize their coursework in a Google Drive folder as I wrote about in this post. Still, sometimes a student needs to post a picture or scan of some handwritten work. The best strategies I’ve found for doing so are listed below and are working well for my students.

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March 24th, 2020 by Luann

Collecting Student Work in Google Drive – KISS

Many of my colleagues ask students to just share their work. Disadvantage: Their email inbox is a disaster. A paraeducator or intervention specialist does not have easy access to their work. And a conventional LMS entails a lot of clicking to find anything.

So. Much Clicking.

Edit 8.19.2020

The past few days, I shared this with my colleagues at our tech learning days. As they worked through Classroom, they had many questions, namely:

  1.  How do I view student work in progress in Classroom?
  2. What if students make a doc, slideshow, or sheet that was NOT shared with them via Classroom?

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October 20th, 2018 by Luann

What I’m Reading

The past summer provided me with a little time and space to read. I wasn’t working any Jumpstarts, maintaining a farm, attending professional development for new “initiatives” at my school, or, thank God, moving across the country. So what did I read? These books*.

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January 29th, 2018 by Luann

In the Classroom: Teachers Sharing Our Work

I tweeted a few weeks ago, mentioning my frustration that a well known site on which you can save your favorite images had become nothing more than a re-direct to a site on which teachers sell their work. A number of other teachers jumped into the conversation, offering up the websites on which their own work could be downloaded for free. Many items are editable. All that is asked is that you follow their Creative Commons or other copyright requests.

On the sites below, you won’t find un-editable but cute worksheets that can be easily used as filler. You won’t find un-editable cut-and-paste scrapbooking-type activities that usually generate an attractive product with little likelihood of students engaging in any depth. You WILL find the best work of accomplished, practicing classroom teachers who continually update their lessons.

UPDATED 5/16/2020

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June 29th, 2017 by Luann

Coming Home to a Place I’d Never Been Before

Yup. We are back in Ohio, after almost 13 years in Washington and then Oregon.

It all happened rather fast. Skyrocketing real estate prices made it a good time to sell the farm.  Administrative changes in my district left me feeling stifled and restless. The Husband easily made a few business moves, made possible because he works from his phone. He bought us a new home in Ohio without my even visiting it. We packed more stuff than 2 people should own. The Husband supervised the movers as they toted it all across the country and he drove the dogs and cat. (Moral of that story: Never purchase something you can’t eat. Except dogs and cats.)

It’s only partly true that I’ve never been here before. We lived in the nearby town for 27 years. We raised our kids here, and they’ve stayed. I knew where the house was but had been inside only through photos and videos. A well-respected local builder built the home for his wife, so construction is topnotch.

I’m considering career options at this point. I’ve turned down 2 offers that were not me, and received one letter of rejection (with typos.) In the meantime, I have some updates to make here – so many posts in draft form – and on the website.

It was time to come home.

New House

New House

September 14th, 2015 by Luann

All Means All Part 3: Graphing our Learning Styles

This is the third in a series of blog posts summarizing my reflections on what it means to provide learning opportunities for every student, every day. Find the series here, at  #AllMeansAll 

 
Evaluating-learning-styles
Disclaimer: I’ve read a good deal of literature and opinion around the validity of learning styles. Nonetheless, at the encouragement of a colleague (this colleague) during some collaborative course design work, I pulled out the learning styles inventory* again this year, in Physical Science classes. The intent was to use the data gathered to introduce graphing, and that was a win.  The colleague suggested we share with students WHY we are interested in their learning styles. We are interested so that we can be sure to make learning available to all students in the modality each student best learns. We discussed this in both classes. The real win, though, was what I learned about my students, and what they learned about themselves.

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