Analysis (cont.)
Though only certain students failed to retain the content material in the artifacts mentioned previously, I did come across a case in which the majority of the class did not retain the content material. In Artifact 6: Mitosis Notes, I tried to teach mitosis through inquiry: the students had to deduce the correct order of the stages of mitosis based on diagrams and notes (Artifact 6.1). Yet when the students were assessed on their knowledge of the content material the day after, I found that most students got the order of the stages of mitosis wrong:
“Out of the 13 people that did their Do-Now, only 6 people got the order of mitosis right. The 7 other people had the stages all out of order. 2 of the 7 had them in the order ‘prophase, telophase, metaphase, anaphase,’ and 4 of the 7 had them in the order ‘prophase, telophase, anaphase, metaphase’ and the last person had them in the order ‘metaphase telophase, prophase, anaphase’ (in red, Artifact 6 Analysis).”
Instead of individuals missing the point of the concept, nearly the whole class missed the point, which leads me to question the nature of the activity itself. This activity was based on inquiry—a teaching technique in which students create the questions and figure out the answers by themselves instead of having the teacher guide them through it (Llewellyn, 2005). In this case, I had given the students the question: what is the order of the stages of mitosis, and they were to figure out the answer based on a series of diagrams and notes. This activity was one of my first times leading an inquiry-based lesson, and it was also the students’ first times following one, so the confusion may have been due to the fact that this was a first for both of us, and I may not have executed it in a manner that was scaffolded enough for the students. Next time, at the end of the activity, when we are talking together as a class about what conclusion they came to in regards to the order of the stages of mitosis, I would then have them cut out their notes and place them in a foldable to re-enforce the correct order of mitosis, and to decrease any chance of misunderstandings of the content material. Furthermore, as mentioned previously, I would try to introduce inquiry as a teaching style earlier so as to get students used to it so they know what to expect when I try to use it again (see Artifact 6 Analysis for more details).
In summary, it seems that, for some students, the strategies that provide differentiation to the ways instruction is presented, may actually interfere with retention. However, I attributed this to habituated expectations of students as to how information is ‘supposed’ to be presented and thus the strategies used so unfamiliar to them that they confused by the learning climate. Another possibility could have been that while the strategies were differentiated, they were not done so in a manner that characterized some students’ strong suits.
“Out of the 13 people that did their Do-Now, only 6 people got the order of mitosis right. The 7 other people had the stages all out of order. 2 of the 7 had them in the order ‘prophase, telophase, metaphase, anaphase,’ and 4 of the 7 had them in the order ‘prophase, telophase, anaphase, metaphase’ and the last person had them in the order ‘metaphase telophase, prophase, anaphase’ (in red, Artifact 6 Analysis).”
Instead of individuals missing the point of the concept, nearly the whole class missed the point, which leads me to question the nature of the activity itself. This activity was based on inquiry—a teaching technique in which students create the questions and figure out the answers by themselves instead of having the teacher guide them through it (Llewellyn, 2005). In this case, I had given the students the question: what is the order of the stages of mitosis, and they were to figure out the answer based on a series of diagrams and notes. This activity was one of my first times leading an inquiry-based lesson, and it was also the students’ first times following one, so the confusion may have been due to the fact that this was a first for both of us, and I may not have executed it in a manner that was scaffolded enough for the students. Next time, at the end of the activity, when we are talking together as a class about what conclusion they came to in regards to the order of the stages of mitosis, I would then have them cut out their notes and place them in a foldable to re-enforce the correct order of mitosis, and to decrease any chance of misunderstandings of the content material. Furthermore, as mentioned previously, I would try to introduce inquiry as a teaching style earlier so as to get students used to it so they know what to expect when I try to use it again (see Artifact 6 Analysis for more details).
In summary, it seems that, for some students, the strategies that provide differentiation to the ways instruction is presented, may actually interfere with retention. However, I attributed this to habituated expectations of students as to how information is ‘supposed’ to be presented and thus the strategies used so unfamiliar to them that they confused by the learning climate. Another possibility could have been that while the strategies were differentiated, they were not done so in a manner that characterized some students’ strong suits.