Introduction Anchor Video
 Project Calendar
 Assessments
 Letter to Parents
Concept Map
 Video Design Principles
 Lesson Plans
 Resources
 Standards Addressed

Quiz

The questions in the quiz are designed to assess to what extent students can already meet the project objectives as listed in the Introduction.  I expect all students to struggle with the experimental design, reading scientific literature, and recognizing local organisms questions.  What will guide my planning for the rest of the project is not whether students can answer all the questions, but rather what their attempts look like.  Did each student come up with a numerical estimate for how much a cougar eats?  If not, then we need to practice making numerical guesses about things.  Did each student draw a scatterplot with deer population size on the y-axis and time on the x-axis?  If not, then we need to practice choosing the appropriate graph for the job, and interpreting different kinds of graphs.

The first two questions will specifically shape how much I expect students to do with primary scientific literature.  If students have a difficult time identifying the important information in the paragraph (weeding out the details), then we will need to spend longer on and cover less of the Riley and Malecki paper as a group.  In that circumstance, I will "pre-digest" or rewrite the part of the paper that we do not read together.

"Backyard" Field Journal Entry

From this first field journal entry, I can gauge how well students communicate in writing.  This allows me to set expectations for papers and other written documents that will help students improve their writing without overwhelming them.  It will also allow me to choose which aspects of writing I will ask individual students to focus on initially: sentence structure, organization, appropriate topics/level of detail, etc.

I can also evaluate how comfortable the students are walking around in the woods and what types of natural features they notice when their attention is not being directed to anything in particular.  The first point is key for a project that involves working in small groups out of sight of buildings.  Students that indicate nervousness or fear need to be paired up with students who are more comfortable in the outdoors.  The second point will determine how much scaffolding I need to provide to get students to notice features of the environment that are relevant the species interactions we are considering.  For example, if some students say nothing about plants in their field journals, I might hold a plant-focused scavenger hunt to get students looking at plants more closely.  "Noticing" is important for safety considerations as well.  I do not want students falling into ravines or wandering through poison ivy.  Contrasting cases are particularly effective at getting students to notice differences between similar things, and the field journal entries will help me decide whether we need to study some contrasting cases to "develop an eye" as we start on the project.