Gamifying My Freshman Biology Class

School starts tomorrow. (Ack!) And I am teaching 4 freshman Biology classes. (Ack!) This year, I have decided to gamify my classroom management system. (Read more about gamifying your classroom here.) Our school mascot is the Hawks, so the game elements are Hawk-themed.

All of my students will have Chromebooks this year, so advertising the game points, levels, and badges, will be a simple matter of setting up Google Sheets. Once things get rolling along, I will probably create a Google Site for a game console. I know these things are somewhat time consuming, but if the system results in more student engagement and less discipline, the time will have been well spent.

Almost all of my ideas are stolen from other teachers. In the coming days and weeks, I will probably have to adjust the game system, and if I don’t have a complete meltdown, I will post revisions here as I go.

Class “Hawk Points”

The entire class period earns a “Hawk Point” for the day if every student (or almost every student) meets three expectations:

1. Ready To Learn: All or most of class is on time, ready to work with writing utensil, notebook, charged Chromebook, and no visible cell phone. Minimal bathroom trips; BYOH2O
2. Act Like A Hawk: All or most of class shows common courtesy, learning norms (wait for cues to speak, whiteboard rules, no blurting answers or comments, etc.), polite language. Nothing is thrown.
3. Keep The Nest Clean: No litter left behind, no trash in recycling bin, no writing on furniture, no messing with plumbing or gas fixtures, etc.

Class Levels

Each class period begins the game at Level 0
Whole Class Levels:
Level 0 = Noobs = no privileges 
Level 1 = Good Eggs = Feeding Behavior (food allowed, as long as the nest is kept clean) 
Level 2 = Nestlings = Singing Hawk (listen to music with headphones when done with exam)
Level 3 = Fledglings = Thermal (use notebook for 1 min during exam); Updraft (teacher provides 1 clue on one exam question)
Level 4 = Hawks = Invisibility (go to restroom ~3 min once w/o consequence); Shared Bounty (teacher brings snacks for class)
***Special Rule: At teacher’s Discretion, regardless of Class Level, there may be a “Coyote Attack,” which temporarily removes all class privileges back to Level 0. Class must earn Hawk Point for 2 consecutive days to regain their previous Level.

Individual HP and XP

Students will earn a certain number of HP (health points) each day based on two factors: first, the Class Level will set a base number of HP for each student in the class period; second, adjustments will be made based on individual student behaviors.

To keep track of these student behaviors, I will be using Class Dojo on my own wireless device (either my classroom iPad or, in a pinch, on my own cell phone). Random selection is considered a norm in my district, so I use Class Dojo’s random student selector to pick my students, so for me, Class Dojo kills 2 birds with one stone.

HP = “Dojo Points” = Number of HP points earned per day.
Level 0: +5 pts per day base.
Level 1; +6 pts per day base
Level 2: +7 pts per day base
Level 3: +8 pts per day base
Level 4: +9 pts per day base
Note: During Coyote Attack, base is 5 pts per day regardless of class Level.
Naughty Naughty HP adjustments:

 -1 HP per minute tardy
 -3 HP cell phone or similar distraction
 -3 HP sent out

 -5 HP littering, writing on desk, etc.

 -ALL HP if suspended from class

 +1 HP good response when called on

 +3 HP good deed

 +5 HP help clean up lab during office hours

Individual Badges

Students also have the opportunity to earn bonus HP with special badges. Most are awarded at the end of the week, although some can be awarded “on the spot.” I may create additional badges as the year progresses.

Cell Phone Samurai — phone was not visible for the entire week +5HP

Toilet master — returns back promptly from all restroom breaks.  +3 HP

Time Lord- effective use of time. Entire week withat no absences, no tardies, no missed deadlines, and no restroom breaks. +5 HP

Dragon Tamer– special badge everyone in class period earns if 80% of students pass an assessment with min score 3 out of 4. +7 HP

Lab Jedi– special badge everyone in a lab group earns if everyone in the lab group earns mininum score of 3 on lab report. +8 HP

Lab Safety — returned class policies; no horseplay; keeps goggles on; reports accidents or spills to teacher promptly +3 HP

Team Names

Throughout the year, I will be assigning group projects and laboratory experiments. Why not give each group a catchy gamified team name? I teach biology, so for each team name, I selected a famous biologist, and added a descriptor related to the famous biologist’s work.

Mendel’s Minions
Franklin’s X-Rays
Darwin’s Tortoises
McClintock’s Huskers
Linnaeus’s Listers
Carson’s Songbirds
Wilson’s Ants
Okazaki’s Laggers
Hook’s Wallers
Jenner’s Antibodies
Van Leeuwenhoek’s Animalcules
Pasteur’s Germs
Tyson’s Spacers
Watson’s Twisters
Morgan’s Fruit Flies
Hardy-Weinberg’s Balancers
Calvin’s Cyclers
Kornberg’s Enzymes

18 Cool Names for Biology Lab Groups

Fellow Teachers: Why not make lab groupings a little more interesting? I thought of some catchy names for my Biology students’ lab groups. Each name is a famous scientist’s last name + a team moniker that somehow relates to their work. I have class sizes of ~35 students, so 18 names will allow me to give a unique name to each pair of students. (Of course, I could use fewer names for larger groups.)

I’m planning on NOT answering any students who ask me what the name means. Instead, I will encourage them to research the name independently, or at least be patient until we learn about that scientist at some point during the school year.

1. Mendel’s Minions
2. Franklin’s X-Rays
3. Darwin’s Tortoises
4. McClintock’s Huskers
5. Linnaeus’s Listers
6. Carson’s Songbirds
7. Wilson’s Ants
8. Okazaki’s Laggers
9. Hook’s Wallers
10. Jenner’s Antibodies
11. Van Leeuwenhoek’s Animalcules
12. Pasteur’s Germs
13. Tyson’s Spacers
14. Watson’s Twisters
15. Morgan’s Fruit Flies
16. Hardy-Weinberg’s Balancers
17. Calvin’s Cyclers
18. Kornberg’s Enzymes

Have any more names to suggest? Leave a comment.

 

To Retake or Not To Retake–That Is the Question!

News Flash! Students don’t always give every assignment or test their best effort. So, as a teacher, what do you do when students fail a test or other important assignment? Over the past few years, I’ve noticed a lot of my colleagues (all of whom are terrific teachers) have surprisingly different, even conflicting, philosophies on makeup work.

One of my teacher friends recently asked me, if I allow my students to make up tests easily, what lesson am I teaching my them? Good question! It’s all-too-tempting, especially for teachers like me (a confessed Bleeding-Heart), to allow unlimited makeup opportunities.

But we all know what happens when we allow too many unlimited retake opportunities. Who wants to be the teacher who has a crowd of students spilling into the hallway after school on the last day of the semester, because the students were allowed to make up every assignment all the way to the bitter end? (Yeah, I admit that was me, once upon a time.)

On the other hand, no teacher wants to be the tightwad who never offers makeup work. If you can tell a student two months into the semester that s/he has absolutely no chance of passing the course, then we have a problem. A big problem. And I’m not just talking about the student’s problem of signing up for summer school. I’m talking about your problem: this now-unmotivated student, who might become bored and seek attention, will continue to show up–every single day–for the rest of the semester. Can you really call yourself an effective teacher if you never provide your students second chances?

I don’t think our focus has been quite right. Maybe we’ve been too worried about having one, perfect makeup policy for all students. Why? We should aim to teach our students that learning is important enough to keep trying. This may look different in different types of classrooms, depending on the age and achievement level of your students. If you have a room full of advanced students, then by all means make them work hard, because they care about their grades and will search for every angle they can get.

But when you have a lot of the at-risk students I affectionately call my “Sweathogs,” second chances should come with the territory. If you offer makeup tests, consider using some of these strategies to help make the work meaningful.

• Remediate: Consider creating a remedial assignment that students must complete prior to taking a makeup test. Think short, fill-in-the-blank questions that cover the most important concepts on the test. This can be a very useful assignment for the students, especially if they have to re-process the concepts in a new way (possibly by reading a short article or analyzing something visual like a picture, chart, or graph). You might want to encourage students to use their notes or textbooks to find the answers to the questions. Some teachers also set a minimum delay period (say, a week) before a makeup test may be taken.
• Show Me The Notes: Students often fail a test because they weren’t paying attention in class. If this is the case, why not use this opportunity to reinforce your expectations about taking notes? If students are expected to take notes during lectures and class discussions, you could require them to show you their notes prior to taking a makeup test. If students don’t have any notes to show you, then you can require them to recopy from another student or (if you have one) a master set.
• Timing Is Everything: Many teachers use office hours either at lunch or after school for makeups. If you keep regular office hours, consider scheduling your makeup tests at another time or in another room. It can be awkward explaining the Pythagorean Theorem to one student, while another student 5 feet away is taking a makeup test on the same Pythagorean Theorem.
  However, if your students are like mine, they won’t all flock to spend their spare time in your classroom. Consider carving out some time within the class day for makeup tests. You can even schedule a “Makeup Day” with an entire hour dedicated to nothing but remediation assignments and makeup tests. If you have students who have already passed all of their tests, you can give them a self-directed enrichment assignment during the same time.
• To Penalize or Not To Penalize, That Is the Question: Because many of my students are at-risk, I usually make all of my makeup tests worth full credit. I make my students work to earn their makeup opportunities, so I don’t mind giving them a little incentive. But you might want to consider taking a point penalty for makeup tests. Half credit, 75% maximum, and one-letter-grade limits are all options. Remember, you’re the teacher. If students don’t like your makeup policies, you could always gently remind them that you’re not required by law to give them a makeup in the first place!
• Have another strategy or thought to share? Feel free to add a comment below.

Bottom line: The right grading policy, and the right way to implement it, should be responsive to the needs of the students in your classroom. Collaborating with colleagues definitely helps–maybe the teacher next door, or down the hall, or across town has ideas and experiences that will help you make a better policy. If you have one or more partners who teach a similar class or grade level, why not split up the work and share the same makeup assignments, remedial reviews, and office hour time?

A question for the folks who write college-entrance exams…

Just the other day, I had the privilege of proctoring a college entrance examination for some of my students. To keep myself out of trouble, I won’t name the specific examination I was administering. But let’s just say that it has been around for a very long time–so long that I remember taking it myself over two decades ago.

The long list of instructions that I was required to read out loud hasn’t changed much since I started supervising these exams back in the 1990s. In fact, I practically have them memorized. A lot of students are surprised that, between hearing all of my instructions and filling in all of their personal information, it’s likely to take at least 45 minutes before they finally start to bubble their first answers to grammar and math problems.

I admit that, on this particular day, the long delay was partially my fault, because I wanted to give my students a little pep talk before they started. “You never know–maybe a few extra questions correct will end up making the difference in determining whether you get into your dream college,” I told them with an excited voice. “Or, maybe a good score will help you qualify for a good scholarship. So try your best. You can do this!”

I know I didn’t stick to the script verbatim, but I think it’s important for the students to know that I’m not just a test-wielding robot. I actually care that they do their absolute best, especially because I teach in a community with a lot of hard-working families afflicted by a high poverty rate. I’m proud of the town I live in. My school consistently has one of the top college acceptance rates in our county, even though we aren’t located in the country-club part of town. I’ve read plenty of papers and books about student assessment, so I know that a student’s mindset both before and during the test can strongly influence his or her performance. But that concept shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who is a football fan. Imagine a lazy football coach, for example, who takes a little pre-game nap instead of giving his boys a rousing pep talk before the big homecoming game. What are the chances his team would defeat their well-coached opponents, who might have heard 10 minutes of loud, inspirational morale-boosting before the opening kickoff?

So as I read my script for probably the hundredth time in my career, my mind started to wander, and I thought to myself: What must go through the mind of a teenager during those 45 minutes? More importantly, what goes through the mind of a poor teenager? Or a teenager who doesn’t speak English fluently? Or a teenager whose parents never attended college? In other words, what must be going through the minds of the students in my community?

Well, for starters, the students are told to bubble a single choice for their ethnicity. No instructions are given for how to define these ethnic labels, and no accommodation is made for the many students whose families fit more than one racial category. I must admit, I am a white male, so I’m not speaking from personal experience, but I’ve been told that it’s not a real great ego boost for a person of color to be reminded that they weren’t endowed with white privilege at birth. I’m going to guess that requiring young adults to affirm that fact, in writing, on the answer sheet to their college entrance exam probably doesn’t make them feel too great. Certainly not as confident as those football players who just received the best 10-minute pre-game pep-talk in history from their loving coach!

A little later on, the students must bubble “yes” or “no” to the question of whether they are a U.S. Citizen. I imagine a German exchange student might not bat an eye at such a question, but I guarantee you that it instantly elevates the blood pressure of every undocumented student in the room. I know there are conservative-minded folks out there who don’t think undocumented students deserve a chance to go to a university. Saving that worthy debate for later, I’ll simply say this: These are supposed to be standardized tests, which means everyone should have an equal shot at getting the best score they can. I don’t know about you, but when I was 16, I was a pretty confident little fellow, but I wouldn’t react too well to an overt, government-style reminder that armed agents might break up my family at any time without warning. After a little reminder like that, I think I’d miss a few trigonometry problems.

The grand finale, of course, is when students have to write their home mailing address. Well, they don’t have to just write it. They also have to hand-bubble every single letter, number, space, hyphen, and slash in their address. Seriously. The process can take 5 minutes, even for the sharpest college-bound student. Students are told to provide this address so that all the glossy college brochures and important scholarship letters will be delivered to the right house. I wonder if the folks who write these tests ever stopped to think a little. Some of our students don’t have a home mailing address. I have students who are smart enough to go to college who are living in a car, or are bouncing around between several different relatives, or are staying with friends until something terrible cools down at home. What goes through their minds for 5 minutes while they’re bubbling that address? I don’t think they’re going to be reminding themselves how to properly conjugate a verb in the subjunctive.

So for those nice folks who write these tests, let me ask a simple question. It’s a question that has been asked many times before now, by many people far more eloquent than me. It has been asked for a couple of decades now, because I remember it being asked out loud back when I was in teacher school, and it probably wasn’t even a new question then, either. Here’s the question: If you really want your test to be standardized, in other words, if you really want every kid in America to have a fair shake at the American Dream, then why, why, for Pete’s sake, WHY don’t you ask these damned questions AFTER the test is over? Or, better yet, have the test-takers fill out all of that stuff prior to testing day? Why not take up that golden 45 minutes with a rousing pep talk about their opportunity to go to college? That what they are doing will help them live an enlightened life, open career doors, and exert greater economic and political power? I’m waiting for an answer.

What will science classrooms look like in 17 years?

After a scary foray or two into administration, I have happily re-established myself as a classroom high school science teacher. I was a relative newcomer to teaching back in the late 1990s when the California Content Standards were first adopted. As those Standards were adopted across the state, and especially after the State of California started throwing STAR and CST tests at my students, I joined the rest of my science-teacher colleagues in modifying our instruction to fit the new standards.

Much like a frog in gradually heated water, I spent the next 10 years slowly adjusting my classroom. (“Adjusting,” as used here, is a word which means, “eliminating most of the inquiry, cooperative learning, and hands-on laboratory experience in order to maximize student scores on mediocre standardized tests.”) Like the proverbial frog, I probably kind of missed the fact that, even though I had started my career hoping to prepare my students to be curious, self-motivated investigators, the environment had become somewhat uncomfortable–possibly even dangerous–to constructivist learning.

Now, the reform pendulum seems to have just finished its first complete cycle since I started teaching. The physics teacher in me would say that the observed period (T) of “educational policy” simple harmonic motion is about 17 years. Instead of listing the things that are currently changing in public education in California, it might be easier to list the things that aren’t changing, but I will try anyway:

1. Over the past year, teachers like me have had to start adapting to a completely new set of curriculum standards (NGSS), which were officially adopted last fall by the California Department of Education.

2. The NGSS is kind of like the younger sibling of the Common Core standards in mathematics and English language arts, which have changed the standards of virtually every K-12 classroom in California, as well as 42 other states.

3. Most schools are radically implementing expensive and game-changing instructional technologies. In my case, a large amount of taxpayer money is being spent to put a wireless-connected Chromebook in the hands of each and every one of my students next fall.

4. Speaking of money, the way schools are funded in California has radically changed over the past 2 years as well.

5. Oh, and just to throw something else into the mix, my high-poverty, high-English Learner community, like most of the rest of America, is finally emerging from an economic depression that, oddly, no one wants to call a depression, even though it has been going on for 6 years.

So, naturally, I’ve been asking myself lately, with all of the amazing and frightening changes that public education is currently going through in the US and in California, what will science classrooms look like over the next 17 years? I picked 17 years because I suspect that is about how many years I will be teaching from now until my retirement, give or take another depression or two.

Well, one thing we can say for certain is that our students will be inundated by an astounding array of technology. I was recently excited, but also a little frightened, to see Microsoft’s vision of what 2019 will look like:

I also have been hearing from the folks in Sacramento that classroom teachers will be moving away from the direct instruction model that has carried us through the past decade of educational reform. Now, the emphasis will move to the 4 C’s: Collaboration, Communication, Critical thinking, and Creativity. I think I could get used to these 4 C’s, because I cut my teeth as a young scientist by working together in small groups to solve problems. I wasn’t a “real” scientist for very long, but I did notice that the folks who actually got paid money to “do science” were not necessarily the sort of people who efficiently bubbled all the right answers on standardized tests. They were the people who worked hard, used their noggins creatively, and played well with others.

I also like to think about the long-range future because I am frightened by how seldom educators actually do that. We science teachers are currently obsessed with the daunting changes that face us in the next couple of years. And to be sure, this is going to be a wild ride: In high school, we will still give the NCLB Life Science test to 10th graders for at least the next two years, even though we will be phasing in some new exam, presumably an electronic, higher-order thinking test full of questions that will probably have us scratching our heads as much as our students. The new NGSS standards include chemistry at every grade level from K through 12, even though it was previously taught a little bit in 7th grade and then not at all until 10th grade.

But here’s the thing: I don’t want to be like the frog in the slowly heating water this time around. I hope that the test-writing companies and the textbook-publishing companies don’t get to sit in the driver’s seat this time around. I’d like to think that we can band together as professional teachers and incorporate the best aspects of the 1990s reforms–like moderate accountability, attention to all subgroups, and collaboration, while infusing just enough guided inquiry, laboratory investigation, and process skills to ensure that our students actually are learning science. And I also hope we can get the reforms right this time, which means implementing new standards and assessments without largely ignoring English Learners and students with special needs.

Hey, I know I’m dreaming big here. But we’ve got a golden opportunity here to improve science teaching right now, for today’s students. A few years from now, I hope we don’t find ourselves stagnating and waiting another 17 years for that pendulum to complete its next period. In fact, I hope we band together and fight to make sure we don’t. Do you know why? Because, according to the California Department of Education, the United States is currently the 48th-ranked nation in quality of K-12 math and science education. And, among the 50 states, California placed 49th last year. How did we slip so far in one or two generations? My friends, the stakes are too high for us to fail this time.

Remind.com’s Cool URL Shortener

“Good teachers borrow. Great teachers steal.” I can still remember my master teacher telling me this even after many years. (OK, I’ll be honest, it has been 19 years. There. Now you know that I am truly old. Ancient by teaching standards…)

At any rate, I was recently attending my sons’ back to school nights, and noticed something cool. Both of their teachers are using Remind 101 (now called, simply, remind.com) to stay in touch with parents. I did a little research, and found that this service is legit: a free site that allows teachers to send free reminders via text message, email, and/or reminder app.

The messages are one-way for parents and/or students, and they don’t come with any pesky ads or other annoyances of capitalism. The catch? There is none, according to the company. They are honing their technology for eventual rollout to paying customers, but they promise their service teachers will always be free. Cool!

So I started using the service for my science classes, just to send quick reminders about homework due dates and quizzes. But one of my colleagues decided to do what he does best: tinker a little with it. He found something REALLY cool: Because remind.com has a strict 140 character limit, they very ingeniously embedded an automatic URL-shrinking function into the messaging. In other words, if I cut-and-paste a link for a web address … even a really, really loooooong web address like, say, the URL for a shared Google Doc, then Remind automatically shrinks my link to a cute little address that gets popped into the text message automatically.

So, my students who have smartphones can automatically download a Google Doc by clicking on the short URL directly from their text message. So, for example, they can read their homework on their phone with a single click. How cool is that? They call it the URL Shortener, and you can read more about it here:

http://blog.remind.com/feature-update-the-url-shortener-is-here/

Even the students without smartphones (or teachers without smartphones, like me, but that’s a long story I won’t tell here…) get to play: because that URL is so darned short, it can be handwritten on the old-fashioned, oft-neglected board on the front wall of my classroom, and the students can hand-copy the link onto a scrap of paper. Presto! With just a short web address, a slash, and 5 little characters, they can quickly access their homework file, without fussing over any usernames or passwords.

So I am going to modify the advice my master teacher gave me all those years ago: Good teachers borrow and/or steal. Great teachers tinker!