9.1 Reflection
Today in class, I had students create a comic strip telling the story of what Mendel did with his peas. They were given the following directions:
" Create a comic strip on Mendel and his Peas—tell the story of how he came to his conclusions. You must include the following: the 3 steps of Mendel’s experiment, the results of Mendel’s experiment, and Mendel’s 4 hypotheses."
Students were then given paper, colored pencils, and markers, and told to go. It was so interesting when I was coming around to hear some of them talking about how to make their comic that some of them had no clue what they were supposed to be writing a comic on. This comic strip was assigned because it was basically having them re-write their notes and illustrate what their notes say, yet some
of them were looking at their notes and going, “huh?” I had one girl read me the notes, and then say, “What does that mean?” It was as if they had just sat in class the past two days and written down the notes from the Powerpoint without absorbing or understanding any of them. Like robots. This leads me to conclude that the students haven’t learned anything in the past two days—they have been present physically, but not mentally in class.
Yet now that they were being asked to do something with their notes, to illustrate what the notes are telling them, they were reflecting on what the notes meant and how they could illustrate it. I walked by some really interesting conversations on the students trying to translate their notes and figuring out what they meant. When I helped them out, some of them went “Oooh! That was what you were saying?!”and
then they had great ideas for how to illustrate them. My biggest questions now though are that if students don’t understand that notes that they are copying down, why don’t they ask me about it?
" Create a comic strip on Mendel and his Peas—tell the story of how he came to his conclusions. You must include the following: the 3 steps of Mendel’s experiment, the results of Mendel’s experiment, and Mendel’s 4 hypotheses."
Students were then given paper, colored pencils, and markers, and told to go. It was so interesting when I was coming around to hear some of them talking about how to make their comic that some of them had no clue what they were supposed to be writing a comic on. This comic strip was assigned because it was basically having them re-write their notes and illustrate what their notes say, yet some
of them were looking at their notes and going, “huh?” I had one girl read me the notes, and then say, “What does that mean?” It was as if they had just sat in class the past two days and written down the notes from the Powerpoint without absorbing or understanding any of them. Like robots. This leads me to conclude that the students haven’t learned anything in the past two days—they have been present physically, but not mentally in class.
Yet now that they were being asked to do something with their notes, to illustrate what the notes are telling them, they were reflecting on what the notes meant and how they could illustrate it. I walked by some really interesting conversations on the students trying to translate their notes and figuring out what they meant. When I helped them out, some of them went “Oooh! That was what you were saying?!”and
then they had great ideas for how to illustrate them. My biggest questions now though are that if students don’t understand that notes that they are copying down, why don’t they ask me about it?