CSI Ypsilanti

Here is the Ruben's tube video I promised, along with photos of the crime scene absorption spectroscopy activity we did today (which was the most stunning success I've had all year). The activity was framed as a crime scene investigation evidence analysis, the handout for which can be found here.

I will probably explain this all at tonight's TF meeting, but I got fed up with students not paying attention and spending so much of my efforts on getting them to care, so I decided to try a new approach. I know that there are some students who are focused and want to learn when they come to class, but they are often thwarted or held back by their less driven peers. For today's activity, I told the class that I would be doing an activity at the back lab table that would be covering a lot of information and that I wouldn't have time to repeat myself a lot for people who weren't paying attention, were distracting others, fighting, and generally acting like third graders. That being the case, I offered them an alternate writing assignment that they could do instead if they did not want to participate, or that I would ask them to do if they did participate, but caused trouble. I made it very clear, however, that the activity and the writing assignment were equally valid for them to choose, so if they did not participate in the activity, it would not reflect negatively upon them.

Given these options, about 15 students initially joined me for the activity, with about five of them deciding in the first minute or two that it didn't look interesting enough and opting for the writing instead (which I found odd, since I don't ever remember a time in high school where I would rather write than do an activity). This left me with a self-selected group of 10 interested and engaged students, all of whom were completely focused the entire hour. At the end of the hour, Ms. Hardy told me that some of the students who did the activity were talking about how cool it was and that they had made some of their peers who decided to not participate regret their decision. This is exactly what I had hoped for! Hearing their peers talking about how cool something is is far more effective and piquing students' interest than hearing me talk about how cool it is. I plan to take this same tack next time and hope that there will be more participation because of the positive word of mouth.

On another note, I sort of wonder how much of the success of this activity was because of the self-selecting group and how much was because it was just a really neat activity (not to boast, but I impressed myself with this one). I sometimes think that a contributing factor to lack of focus during classroom activities is simply because they're not interesting or engaging enough. Who wants to focus on something they find boring?