Materials

Hey Guys,

I'm busy at work over here. Writing quizzes and worksheets is difficult; however, grading hundreds of those quizzes and worksheets is even worse. While I was grading, I realized that you guys probably have no idea what my teaching materials look like. I will post below a few of the quizzes and assignments that I have made for my research. Till next time!

AP European History

Quiz: Chapter 15 Pt. 1

1.      Which of the following industries were NOT associated with the second industrial revolution?

A.    Steel Mills

B.     Steam Power

C.     Chemical Products

D.    Shipyards

2.      What social dilemmas faced European society during the second Industrial revolution?

A.    Women’s rights

B.     Economic failure

C.     Worker’s rights

D.    Both A and C

3.      Where did Europe obtain the resources to fuel the industrial revolution?

A.    The rest of the world

B.     Western Europe

C.     Eastern Europe

D.    Russia and the United States

4.      What happened during the revolution with respect to Britain’s industrial power?

A.    Britain became the global industrial leader

B.     Britain’s economy was crushed due to competition

C.     Britain’s economy was matched in power by the rest of Europe

D.    Britain and many powerful European nations joined their industries in order to mutually benefit each other

5.      Why did the second industrial revolution cause people to migrate on such a large scale?

A.    The living conditions worsened for the lower class

B.     Much of the profits from the industry flowed to the upper class, making the other classes struggle

C.     It didn’t, it merely gave people the opportunity to migrate

D.    Over-harvesting and poor weather led to multiple famines throughout Europe

6.      What made it possible for so many to migrate during the revolution?

A.    Innovations in transportation

B.     More legal freedoms to minorities

C.     Relaxed migration laws

D.    It wasn’t possible, many were unable to move due to the high prices

Beginning of student-centered

Hey Guys,

Great news! I have made my first student-centered lesson plan. With the assistance of my two awesome advisers, I have made both a quiz and an activity for the AP World History class to take tomorrow.

Mr. Bayer and I had some difficulty coming up with a way to adapt his very lecture-based lessons, but Mr. Coaloa gave us some good insight. We will still utilize our collection method of giving the subjects a baseline quiz beforehand, and then the same quiz after the lesson.

 The difference here will be the lesson itself. Instead of Mr. Bayer or myself giving the students a PowerPoint lecture, we will give the students a worksheet that they must use the textbook to complete. Now, the information will be found, processed, and ideally retained exclusively by the students. They may work alone or in a group. The instructor’s role in this style is only to keep the students on track. The kids can ask clarifying questions or ask the meaning of something, but they must find the information without the teacher feeding it to them.

In terms of student-centered classes, tomorrow I also plan on observing a college level class taught by Mr. Coaloa which utilizes a lesson wherein the students teach themselves.

Writing an entire worksheet was difficult, but I think that I was able to write it in a way that the students must process, at least once, the information needed to learn the lesson and to take the quiz. We will grade these quizzes tomorrow, and I will let you all know how it goes! Till then! 

More good news

Hello Everyone,

I have some good progress to report with my research. A few days ago, I met with my community adviser, Mr. Coaloa. We discussed his teaching at N.A.U. and how he can help me with my project. His teaching style is very heavy on student centered, meaning that the teacher is no longer the main source of information, rather a guide to keep the students on track. This week I plan on going to observe his class in order to get a better idea of what a student centered lesson looks like. Mr. Coaloa said he would also share some of his lesson plans so that Mr. Bayer and I can create some student centered lessons here at BASIS.

Teacher centered testing is going well. Between Mr. Bayer's four AP classes, we have countless quiz scores from lecture style lessons. Mr. Bayer has allowed me to teach a couple lessons as well. So between the two of us, we are collecting a lot of data points.

Hopefully by this Friday I will be able to make a student centered lesson plan for some classes here at school. I am also exploring some opportunities to observe teachers at Flagstaff High School. While my schedule is not working out as well as I would have liked, I have come to realize that being a teacher means you often times have to adjust your time table due to unforeseen circumstances. Nevertheless, we are making significant progress with the project. Till next time!

Back on track

Hello everyone,

Today is an exciting day for my research project! I have finally made headway with data collection. I have also developed a scheduled plan for the future.

Today, I handed out the very first baseline quizzes to the AP European History and the AP World History students. I compiled/wrote these quizzes last night, and today the students took them. None of the kids have learned this material, at least not this year. I intentionally chose to test them on material that they did not know in order to legitimize any results I later obtain. Now that I have a baseline, the students are ready to be taught the material. I had the opportunity to teach AP World today after their quiz, and on Tuesday, they will take it again. I will teach AP Euro their lesson on Tuesday and give them the second quiz as well.

I plan on alternating teaching methods in the future. But the basic schedule is as follows: hand out baseline quiz, teach using X-method, give same quiz at a later date, compare the two quizzes.

Today, Thursday, marks the official one week mark of my project. The beginnings were a bit shaky, but I believe that this project is running at almost full speed. I have dozens of quizzes from just one day, My teaching will require much work, but if today is any indication, this project is going to be very successful. Till next time!

Problems

Here is a quick update on the project,

I have found that many of the bugs are starting to come out of this project. On Tuesday, my speech and debate teacher, Mrs. Tucker, was sick. She told me that on that day I could teach the class a lesson and use the class as a part of my project. Initially, this was a very exciting prospect for me. I made a lesson plan, and I wrote a short quiz for the students after the lesson. 

I decided to teach the class using the interactive method, since I had little time to plan out a lecture style class, wherein the entire class has a discussion on the topic. I gave them a quiz, and the results were very impressive, everyone did well. However, after I taught the class and quizzed them, I realized that I was unable to compare the quiz results to anything. So I was unsure of what to do, because I did not think to establish a baseline for their knowledge before I taught them. So I had to figure out what to do.

The next day, Wednesday, Mrs. Tucker was still sick. So I was able to make a second attempt to collect data on a method. After I consulted a few teachers and my adviser, I decided that in order to establish a baseline knowledge before the lesson I needed to give the students a pre-quiz. I wrote out a quiz, gave it to them before the lesson, and then I gave them the quiz again after the lesson. I thought that I had fixed the issue, however, turns out I did not. 

Mr. Calhoun, the English teacher at school was supervising my lesson yesterday.(I am not able to teach without a faculty member for liability reasons) He explained to me many of the issues with my lesson, and long story short, I did not teach correctly. The quizzes were short answer, which makes empirical grading more difficult(at least for me) and the goal of the discussion was not made clear(my fault) so both of those days yielded no data, yet they did help me. If you're wondering how, I found 99 ways not to research teaching methods.

In the end, I realized that with the time and resources I have for this project, I will need to scale back the experiments scope. I will throw out the interactive method, and now I will be examining teacher-centered learning and student-centered learning. Interactive method, when done correctly, is in itself difficult to examine, and many of my test subjects who are history students do not really have opportunity to use that format. I am optimistic about the future of this project. Now, I can write more multiple choice quizzes based on the two methods left, and I can get a clearer image from the students.   

Even though I have not gained data yet, this week has not been for naught. I have been watching and learning from my adviser, Mr. Bayer, all week. And starting tomorrow, I will distribute a baseline quiz to the AP World and European History students. Also happening tomorrow, I will teach the AP World class a lesson and I will hand out the post-lesson quizzes. Tomorrow I plan on getting the first official data. Till then!

Method 1: Teacher Centered

Hello Everyone,

This weekend has been full of power-point making and lesson planning. While I was busy copying and pasting images of the Industrial Revolution, I realized that I never told you about which methods I would be comparing in this study. Sorry to have left you all hanging, I will tell you now.

Due to the limited time I have, and the fact that studying which method of teaching is best is in itself difficult, I have narrowed my methodologies down to three main types. I will examine teacher centered, learner centered, and interactive methods of instruction.

This week I will begin with what I have found to be the simplest method: teacher centered. This method is known as lecture style, didactic instruction, and many others. My research of this method tells me that the flow of information is essentially a one way street. The teacher takes the information, processes it into a lesson, and then feeds it to the student. This style will be, in my opinion, the easiest to start out with because Mr. Bayer utilizes it a majority of the time he teaches. Also, the work he has me doing for him, making presentations, fits perfectly into the model for teacher centered.

Some of my books on teaching have outlined this style of teaching a little more. Didactic is definitely one of the oldest and most common forms of education. For those of you who took lecture classes in college, don't worry, I will not force my test subjects to endure that kind of teaching, I'll make it more enjoyable. Many describe the pupils in this style to be passive, and the teacher to be active. One issue I anticipate will be a lack of focus due to the fact that the students don't actually have any incentive to pay attention. Another criticism I have heard about this method is the fact that some students cannot learn as well in a strict lecture, some need to interact and discuss the topic at hand.

I still have much more research to do before I am ready to enact the teacher centered method, but I thought that I would keep you all updated on the project. Till next time!

Teaching is actually a lot of work.

Welcome back!

Day two of my senior research project has begun! Already, I have been given multiple assignments to work on. I have also started lesson planning for the AP European History class. This coming Monday, I need to have a completed presentation on chapter 15.(Mr. Bayer tells me to have the power-point be 65-80 slides, if you were wondering) By Wednesday, we hope that the class will be on schedule to begin chapter 15 and I will be able to teach the first lesson on that section.

Today, I had the opportunity to learn an important lesson. Mr. Bayer allowed me to take over the class for the last fifteen minutes of his AP World History class. Being tossed into the trenches like that definitely showed me the importance of knowing the lesson plan. Mr. Bayer and I have been discussing the vitality of being personally involved in the planning of a lesson. Working with his power-point with minimal time to prepare made it much more difficult to instruct the class on the subject at hand.

While being in front of twenty-something eighth graders was intimidating, my short lecture went well. The students responded positively. There were few issues with discipline, and the students did not exhibit much hesitation when it came to questions. Mr. Bayer did need to interject every so often, for the purpose of filling in the kids on additional information I missed. On that note, I also learned that an effective teacher needs to know what the students need to know. Today, I was not sure just how much information they needed from the chapter. I will need to learn how to separate the important facts of the subject from the fluff.

Another assignment I received today was to supervise student hours. After school today, I will stay in Mr. Bayer's room for an hour or so in order to help students who come in for extra assistance with their work. Students can come to student hours for anything from homework help, to getting the notes of the day, or even to take a quiz they missed.(Of course I will only be able to help them with notes and homework questions.)

Undoubtedly, this weekend will be a busy one. Between making a power-point presentation of chapter 15 and writing a 15 question quiz on the material in that chapter, I will have time for little else. However, I must say that the past two days have been amazing. Not to say that I did not enjoy my capstone classes, but it is very nice having three formal classes a day. Now, I can focus my energy on my few classes and my research project. I will also meet with my community adviser this weekend in order to plan out the logistics of meeting and observing him teach. Till next time!
-Noah Creek

First day on the job!

Hello and welcome!

Today is officially the first day of my senior project. I am very excited to begin working on my research. For those of you who are wondering about my project, I plan on examining the effectiveness of different teaching methodologies. I will research several major methods, and I will teach classes at my school using those methods. Towards the end of class, I will hand out a short quiz on the lesson, and grade it as data collection. Hopefully, I will have sufficient data at the end of this project that I will be able to arrive at a conclusion regarding my investigation.

 I am especially excited about working with my in school adviser. Mr. Bayer, my adviser, has allowed me to use his students as the majority of my test subjects. During my research, I hope to not only investigate my experiment, but also teaching in general. What attracted me to this project was my interest in teaching. While performing this experiment, I will also function as Mr. Bayer's teaching assistant in order to understand more about being a teacher in a general sense. Additionally, I will be working with Mr. Stefano Coaloa, my community adviser from Northern Arizona University. He will also help me better understand how to execute my experiments with the students. I am very happy to have so many resources available to me during this project.

 Today I observed Mr. Bayer teaching his AP European History class. I am excited to start working with the students. I was introduced today, and many of them had positive reactions, probably because I am good friends with them. I did notice that the second hour class might prove to be difficult test subjects. I think that classroom discipline will be a challenge to handle. I feel that with time, the classes will get to know me as a "teacher", and they will be more responsive to my instruction.

Overall, I believe that this project is off to a good start. Starting tomorrow, I will begin lesson planning with the first method. If all goes well, I will be able to teach my first lesson in the beginning of next week. No doubt, I will need the help of both of my advisers throughout this project, but I am very optimistic about getting to teach. Till tomorrow!

-Noah Creek