Artifact 3 Analysis
Context:
To teach active and passive transport, I created a play entitled “Active and Passive Transport: the Play.” The play was broken up into 4 acts: 1 act for each day that we would be doing the play. The idea was that each act would demonstrate a specific kind of transport: osmosis, facilitated diffusion, or active transport, and then the last act would tie everything together. Each day had a certain number of lead roles and supporting actors. These actors were the students. All students were given a role from the very beginning: these roles included phospholipids, water, calcium ions, calcium ion channel, glucose, glucose channel, and ATP, and each role had a specific description of what they were.
After the play was over, they had to submit a set of reflection questions which were used to evaluate whether they had retained any of the knowledge (Artifact 3.1).
Analysis of Artifact/Relation to Focus of Inquiry:
In this activity, I differentiated instruction by having students act out active and passive transport instead of lecturing on it, thus incorporating the kinesthetic and visual intelligences. Though it seemed like many people were confused, they ended up doing pretty well on the reflection questions—the class average was a 75%, which indicates retention of content knowledge (Artifact 3.3).
However, though there seemed to be general retention of the content knowledge, there were still some students that missed the point of the activity. Some students, such as Student 1, sort of got it, and made some connections between the content material and the play, and some students did not get it at all, and made few connections between the content material and the play, such as Student 3 (Artifact 3.2). Furthermore, out of 32 students, 6 people did not turn it in. Did this happen because there was confusion as to when it was due? Did they not do it because they were confused as to my taking over? Or did they not do it because they did not understand it? Furthermore, I also got very different verbal feedback from this activity. One student told me right out that he was very confused, but another student handed me her quiz grade later that week (a quiz that also covered some of this material) and said “We should do plays more often!” with a huge smile on her face.
This data supports that students learn differently and need different methods of instruction; while one student blossomed under the chance to move around with the material, another was really confused, which indicates that students have different preferences for how the content material is delivered, and thus they also have different preferences as to which methods help them to retain the material best. This supports what Garner (1983) writes--he writes that people have different combinations of intelligences and learning styles, so this particular activity may have suited some students excellently, but other students may have been lost, and may not have been able to learn the content material so that they would be able to retain it.
Yet though Gardner found that students may learn best when the material is delivered in a manner that suits the intelligences that they are strong in, Halpern and Hakel (2003) found that varying the learning conditions may be harder for learners, but it results in better learners. Thus, differentiating instruction may in the end be good for students as they are being challenged in how they learn material and may become better learners as a result of it. On the other hand though, there needs to be a back-up plan; it is legitimate to teach students how to learn in a new way, but the material also needs to be presented in a manner that they can learn from, and thus retain the content material.
This leads me to conclude that in order to maximize the retention of content material, the material should be delivered in as many forms as possible, The problem with this activity was that the content material was only delivered in one way--via the play, which some students did not get. Therefore, next time I do this, I would supplement the play with other methods of differentiation so as to reach as many students as possible. A study by Cherney (2008) found that students were more likely to remember concepts introduced through active learning exercises and then followed up by videos and lecture material. this activity in particular included the active portion, but was not followed up by any additional lecture of videos. Therefore, next time I do this activity, I would try to supplement the play with a lecture or another method of instruction.
To teach active and passive transport, I created a play entitled “Active and Passive Transport: the Play.” The play was broken up into 4 acts: 1 act for each day that we would be doing the play. The idea was that each act would demonstrate a specific kind of transport: osmosis, facilitated diffusion, or active transport, and then the last act would tie everything together. Each day had a certain number of lead roles and supporting actors. These actors were the students. All students were given a role from the very beginning: these roles included phospholipids, water, calcium ions, calcium ion channel, glucose, glucose channel, and ATP, and each role had a specific description of what they were.
After the play was over, they had to submit a set of reflection questions which were used to evaluate whether they had retained any of the knowledge (Artifact 3.1).
Analysis of Artifact/Relation to Focus of Inquiry:
In this activity, I differentiated instruction by having students act out active and passive transport instead of lecturing on it, thus incorporating the kinesthetic and visual intelligences. Though it seemed like many people were confused, they ended up doing pretty well on the reflection questions—the class average was a 75%, which indicates retention of content knowledge (Artifact 3.3).
However, though there seemed to be general retention of the content knowledge, there were still some students that missed the point of the activity. Some students, such as Student 1, sort of got it, and made some connections between the content material and the play, and some students did not get it at all, and made few connections between the content material and the play, such as Student 3 (Artifact 3.2). Furthermore, out of 32 students, 6 people did not turn it in. Did this happen because there was confusion as to when it was due? Did they not do it because they were confused as to my taking over? Or did they not do it because they did not understand it? Furthermore, I also got very different verbal feedback from this activity. One student told me right out that he was very confused, but another student handed me her quiz grade later that week (a quiz that also covered some of this material) and said “We should do plays more often!” with a huge smile on her face.
This data supports that students learn differently and need different methods of instruction; while one student blossomed under the chance to move around with the material, another was really confused, which indicates that students have different preferences for how the content material is delivered, and thus they also have different preferences as to which methods help them to retain the material best. This supports what Garner (1983) writes--he writes that people have different combinations of intelligences and learning styles, so this particular activity may have suited some students excellently, but other students may have been lost, and may not have been able to learn the content material so that they would be able to retain it.
Yet though Gardner found that students may learn best when the material is delivered in a manner that suits the intelligences that they are strong in, Halpern and Hakel (2003) found that varying the learning conditions may be harder for learners, but it results in better learners. Thus, differentiating instruction may in the end be good for students as they are being challenged in how they learn material and may become better learners as a result of it. On the other hand though, there needs to be a back-up plan; it is legitimate to teach students how to learn in a new way, but the material also needs to be presented in a manner that they can learn from, and thus retain the content material.
This leads me to conclude that in order to maximize the retention of content material, the material should be delivered in as many forms as possible, The problem with this activity was that the content material was only delivered in one way--via the play, which some students did not get. Therefore, next time I do this, I would supplement the play with other methods of differentiation so as to reach as many students as possible. A study by Cherney (2008) found that students were more likely to remember concepts introduced through active learning exercises and then followed up by videos and lecture material. this activity in particular included the active portion, but was not followed up by any additional lecture of videos. Therefore, next time I do this activity, I would try to supplement the play with a lecture or another method of instruction.