TE 802: Unit Reflection Sydney Barosko

1. What science did you teach during this unit? What is difficult to understand about the science?
Why do you think so?
This unit was focused on homeostasis and was planned around the phenomenon: What
happens when someone who can’t sweat exercises vigorously? This incorporated the ideas of
passive transport (osmosis and diffusion), evaporation, evaporative cooling, and homeostasis
(positive and negative feedback). These topics were groups because they all were needed to
answer our driving question. We chose not to teach active transport because it wasn’t super
relevant and we didn’t think it was necessary in an introductory course. Though evaporation is
physical science, we only talked about it in the lens of evaporative cooling, and I tried hard to
make sure that students were seeing the connections to life science. Finally we covered
homeostasis and feedback loops, in hindsight I probably would only cover negative feedback
because positive feedback was very confusing to students, but I also could’ve more clearly
highlighted the differences between the two.
Overall, I think that this was a very difficult unit for the students. This was the first
exposure they’d had all year to things at a level they cannot see and they struggled with this. I
kept asking them to show microscope eyes while modeling and it took students many trys to feel
comfortable doing this. Most students still won’t add things at a level they cannot see without
prompting. I tried to give opportunities for practice throughout the unit by having students draw
pictures of water molecules moving for osmosis, draw diffusion, and draw evaporative cooling
but students still showed confusion and resistance when adding these to their final models.
I think that students struggled with homeostasis because it is dynamic and changing. It
also required them to build upon previous knowledge from the body systems unit (something
most of them did not pay attention to at all). I know that they struggled with homeostasis because
it was the topic they knew the least on their summative assessment. We decided to allow them to
retake portions of the test (that mostly dealt with homeostasis) because we thought it was
important and students hadn’t demonstrated an understanding of the topic. Students were able to
demonstrate a deeper understanding on the retake, and this understanding stayed with them for
their final model revisions. On final models, most groups were able to demonstrate an
understanding of homeostasis and how/why it’s important in the human body.

2. How did your unit unfold in relation to your original plan? Did you need to change anything
you were teaching during this unit? Why or why not?
Heading into this unit, I did not anticipate students to struggle with the concepts as much
as they did. This unit took 4 days longer than I anticipated it would. Over this semester, I’ve
come to the realization that everything takes longer to teach/do than I anticipate. I’ve gotten
smarter about building in some buffer days, but this unit we still went over—that’s fine! I grossly
underestimated the time it would take students to design and carry out their experimental design
project. I honestly feel like students could’ve taken 2 weeks on that portion—not because they
didn’t know what to do, but because they did not like how it wasn’t a cookbook procedure and
they had to think to generate their procedure and design. Students struggled with this and
struggled with time management. Something I did during the experimental design portion of the
unit was give them a weekly schedule with a minute by minute breakdown of what was supposed
to be accomplished each day and the time it should’ve taken. This was helpful and a success. I
had a timer on the front board so students knew the time they had remaining for the task they
were on and they knew what to expect. Though this isn’t feasible every day or unit (we often
aren’t planned more than a few days out and things routinely take longer because of good
discussion or questions) I plan on trying to incorporate this more in the future. Teaching students
time management skills is important to me.
This was also the first unit where I thought I was strong on my content knowledge, but
then I got in front of the class to teach and realized that the way I was talking and the things I
was saying weren’t making sense to the students so I had to rethink the way I was presenting
information to them. In terms of osmosis, I couldn’t just say that there was more or less water in
a cell compared to outside a cell. I found that I always had to draw a picture and label specific
amounts of water and stuff—this helped the students be able to see what was happening. As soon
as I started teaching about diffusion and osmosis I could tell it was a topic that students needed
more experience with. Initially I was going to show videos of the egg experiment and other
passive transport demos, but I made an instructional decision to show/do the demos in class to
make it more real and visible for students (also in an effort to make it easier for them to
remember what happened). I also added a day for students to practice and present on passive
transport to their colleagues. I found that this extra day identifying high/low concentration,
molecule movement and drawing a picture really increased their understanding of passive
transport and their ability to talk about it.
The first time teaching feedback loops, I taught it incorrectly. Because of this I choose to
delay instruction and had students do a ‘redo’ with me. I asked them to tape a new page over
their old on in their packet and forget what we had done the previous day. Students responded
surprisingly well to this. I said that I had made a mistake the previous day and could tell that
people were confused, and told them to just treat today as a do over. It went well. Getting a
second exposure to the concepts helped students. Instead of then moving on, I chose to spend the
rest of the day revising and practicing those concepts.

3. Describe the science activities during the unit – what did students do, and how did you
structure their learning opportunities? What might you do differently next time, and why?
This unit was mainly structured around demonstrations/experiences for the students and
guided notes. Students had several hands on activities as well as several times to practice what
they had learned and do sense making. The unit started out with an exercise lab, where students
recorded how their body responded when it exercised (ran up and down stairs for 8 minutes).
Students recorded their temperature, heart rate, breathing rate, and sweat level. Students then
graphed their findings and compared their results to those of the larger class. Students
highlighted trends they saw and then hypothesized why those trends might happen. This activity
was the eliciting activity for students and aimed to hook them with interesting questions—I
breathe heavy/my heart rate increased/I get sweaty during a work out, why don’t I stay that way
the rest of my life. How do I return to normal? In the future I would spread the eliciting out over
multiple days. Students felt rushed for time to learn how to measure their variables and then also
collect data in the same day. To modify I would spend a short day teaching students how to take
their measurements and then give students a long day to run the stairs and make their graphs. We
could then talk about the trends we saw on the following day. This would go smoother and be
less stressful for students—they were anxious because of limited time.
With passive transport students first took guided notes and then observed and
hypothesized over two demonstrations. After having students hypothesize what would happen, I
placed drops of food coloring in a beaker of water and had students observe what was happening.
We revisited the beaker over the course of the hour to check in and see what changes were
occurring—if any. This showed diffusion. I also gave students several other diffusion examples
and had students talk through them—what was happening, where were molecules moving, where
was high and low concentration. For an osmosis demonstration I carried out the egg lab (dissolve
the shell off the egg place it in different solutions) with the students, having them predict what
would happen and then observe over the course of a few days. I liked both of these
demonstrations and would not change them next time, but I would add more to their packet and
have the students write down their predictions and then what they actually saw happen.
Committing initial thinking to paper is a skill that needs continual practice.
To learn about evaporative cooling I did an evaporation demo/experiment where I placed
a droplet of air, water, and isopropyl alcohol on students hands. I asked them to observe what
was happening on their hand. What could they see, what did they feel, what was changing over
time, what rate were things happening at? I had students record what happened and what their
body felt on their notes sheet. After this shared experience, we had a class discussion about what
we saw and felt. Together we arrived at the idea of evaporative cooling. Next time I would
scaffold this more and make them think about things happening at different scales. This is a great
opportunity to practice microscopes eyes and give students a chance to be more comfortable with
small scale things.
The final large science activity of the unit was the experimental design project. Students,
spent one week designing, outlining, carrying out, and then presenting on an experiment they
conceived about homeostasis. In the future I would do more to scaffold this. I thought it was
heavily scaffolded but it was student’s first experience in experimental design, so we were
starting from scratch. I would first give students a short reading about experimental design
(controls, variables, etc.) and then have them work with their partner to figure out what all of
those things were for the exercise lab that they all partook in. Then I would have students pick
from a list of topics and rank the topics they were most interested in. This would be the basis for
their groups. Then students would proceed through the design sheet I had and explain their
thought process for everything, checking off with me as they moved along. I would also have
students prepare more for their presentations, make a one page PowerPoint summary, and make
their graphs in Excel (to gain experience with this and make them easier for their audience to
read).
In addition to scientific activities, my students also got experience with several science
practices this unit. Students had experience graphing, giving presentations, identifying patterns,
analyzing data, designing and carrying out an experiment, and explaining/arguing from evidence.
I would like to continue this and give the students more practice with these skills as the year
progresses.

4. What assessments did you use during the unit (both formative and summative)? Did the
assessments allow students to show you their understanding of science? How? What might
you change about how you assessed students? Why?
I consider every interaction I have with students to be a formative assessment. The
conversations I have and the questions I ask students all help me gain an understanding and a
picture of what students understand and what they don’t understand yet. Other formative
assessments I used that had been mentioned in other papers are the students Osmosis/Diffusion
Venn Diagram, Figure 8 Diagram practice, evaporative cooling drawing, and the experimental
design conclusion paragraphs. The summative assessments I used were their unit test, final
models, and test retake (see unit plan document and assessment of student work for explanations
of the assessments and what they entailed).
Some of these were better than other at allowing students to show me their understanding
of science. The assessments where students had to answer a how/why and explain their thinking
were the most illuminating about their current level of understanding. Students couldn’t just
regurgitate memorized information and be fine, they had to internalize knowledge and then
demonstrate that learning to me. This gave me a better understanding of how well students could
understand and apply a topic than when students just had to regurgitate definitions. Overall for
the unit, many students were confused about homeostasis and stayed confused for a majority of
the unit. It was not until the final model making that students started to understand and see how it
all fit together. I think requiring students to write more and give explanations of their current
level of understanding could help alleviate this. I would like to do more formal formative
assessment that require students writing ideas down, talking to me, and talking to other students
in class—I just generally want there to be more sharing of ideas. Encouraging student talk and
getting students to talk to each other is something I forget to do and I’m actively working to
improve upon this. Having students do more warm-ups and exit tickets that involve them writing
their current understandings down will help the students become more comfortable with writing
and more able to formulate an explanation, as well as help me gain a better understanding of
their level of understanding. Because homeostasis was on the back half of the unit, I did not get a
full sense of the gaps in student understanding until I read their responses on their unit test. More
writing and student talk would’ve allowed me to learn this earlier on and I could’ve done more
activities/practice to bolster students understanding of homeostasis.

5. What are you reflecting about your teaching and students’ ideas now that the unit is over?
Why?
This unit was hard for me to teach, and I learned a lot about my students. I’ve said it
before and I’ll say it again I have to assume that my students know nothing—because for most of
them this is their first exposure to any of this content. I also underestimated how much time is
spent teaching students life skills—time management, responsibility, ownership of ones own
work, study skills, preparedness, etc. Moving forward I want to build in more time to address
these topics, model these skills for students, and then have students attempt them on their own.
I think this unit also marked a change in my students and my relationship. During this
unit, students were much more vocal and honest about their feelings about what we were doing.
Over the course of the unit, I had students tell me that I had too high expectations for them and
that I was treating them like AP students. Students told me that modeling was a waste of time
and was busy work—I didn’t care what they were doing anyways. Finally a student told me that I
was creating an environment where they could do nothing but fail—I wasn’t giving them an
opportunity to succeed. While I appreciate student’s honesty, this was initially disheartening.
Upon thinking thought, I realized that students will be resistant for numerous reasoning, but
especially if they don’t understand why we are doing an activity, or the reasoning behind it. I
need to make my though process and reasoning behind activities more transparent for students.
Some things I’d like to change about my teaching for the future is to make my thinking
more visible to my students. I’d also like to implement warm ups and exit tickets to get a better
sense day-to-day what students are and are not understanding. A small change to make would be
adding page numbers to their packets. There were many times that I wanted students to find a
certain page, and it would take time for students to find the page I was talking about in their
packet because there were no page numbers. I will continue to have students model and do
buddy talk/group work—I think these are important skills for students to learn and great ways for
them to do some sense-making. I also plan to have at least one more experimental design project
for students to do. I think the experience we had this unit was a great learning experience, and
believe that students would show great improvements if they were able to try this again.
Finally I learned that students take time. They take time to listen and carry out directions.
Time to absorb information, and time to do sense-making. Students have great ideas and first
draft thinking, but they are resistant to share still, though this is definitely improving. Moving
forward, I will continually try to reinforce the classroom community we’ve established and
create an environment where students feel safe to share by modeling first draft thinking and
encouraging them to share.