NSTA 2016

Excited that I was able to use my grant money to support one more trip to the National Science Teacher Conference.  I think what motivates me is the passion for science that is represented at this conference.  It makes me appreciate being a teacher even more.  This unit was designed to integrate literacy with science and technology. Being able to share exciting things with my peers, learn from others, and extend my professional learning network are a few of the reasons I was blessed to attend.

For my session this year I presented my Presidential Award Finalist Unit from 2014 "Memoirs of a Goldfish."I really wanted to model how to engage students so I took my session to the hall.  WiFi was only available there. This was an impromptu decision that turned out amazing.  I'm glad I did this because I presented at 5pm, the last session time of the day,  it was apparent engaging my group from the start brought the session to life.

I used the Nearpod App for my presentation. If you haven't used this app it brings a powerpoint alive, enables participants to answer questions, draw examples,  watch videos and much much more.  It's a great tool for gaining immediate feedback, and forces engagement for all participants.  Here is one way I engaged participants right off the bat.  They had to make their favorite fish face and take a fish face selfie.  As I looked out on my group of attendees they were smiling like kids, hamming it up, and taking a risk. After all, inquiry does require risk,  there aren't always clear expectations or answers, we often have more questions than we have solutions.  It's the journey and learning that makes it so impactful.

The Memoirs of a Goldfish Unit was designed for students to understand the difference between learned and inherited behavior in animals.  In order to do that students designed a plan to train their goldfish to ring a bell.  They created their training devices, came up with training schedules, recorded and analyzed data, and took care of their new little pet. In addition to learning the design process, we also studied the life cycle of the goldfish, and how offspring often don't resemble adults.  We discussed why not all goldfish look alike, and we journaled daily in our Memoirs about "fishy" behavior.  We started by observing respiration in goldfish using Gulping Goldfish from Aims Science.  In this activity students observe and record goldfish respiration.  The first thing they observe is goldfish in their environment with no outside impact to the water.  They record the respiration rate. Next we agitated the water by swirling it with a spoon, which adds oxygen to the water.  Again, students counted the gulps to determine the respiration rate. Lastly, we floated a bag of ice on top, waited for the water to cool, then measured the breathing rate.  This is a great experiment for kids.  It taught me that kids need to be shown what observation is and how to observe behavior to draw conclusions.  We often take for granted that children understand what they are looking at, but this often isn't the case.  

As a springboard for this unit students used the book Memoirs of a Goldfish as the inspiration and a little help from Dory and Nemo. Students had to prove that goldfish had a memory longer than 3 seconds. Students began planning using the design process. We went through the process together discussing and clarifying what the goal of the unit was "to prove goldfish have memory longer than 3 seconds."  Research shows that goldfish actually have a memory of up to 5 months, but this isn't shared with students.  

The unit itself lasted about 5 weeks.  Students practiced training goldfish daily and recording their observations.  The actual training part happened for 5-10 minutes a couple of times a day.  Students wrote Memoirs of their experience. They captured pictures and videos of the training as evidence of their success. They used these artifacts to create a book using the Book Creator App to showcase their learning. This unit took my love of literature and science and married them!

I know I got to share my passion that day, it's one of the things that makes me the happiest.  I love watching kids learn, engage, and problem solve.  It truly was memorable.