ExploreLearning News

Michael Mosby: ExploreLearning Educator of the Month

Michael Mosby is in his fifth year of teaching and he now teaches 4th grade science at Owens Elementary, in Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, Texas.

He recently attended a Gizmos training event and was excited to take advantage of them in his classroom. He now uses many different Gizmos, covering concepts as diverse as Density and Phases of the Moon. At an ExploreLearning School Leadership event last spring he was honored for his extensive use of Gizmos, bringing more engaging and effective math and science instruction to his students.

Mr. Mosby points to the Density Gizmo as a good example of how Gizmos have helped with his teaching. He uses a hands-on experiment to explore density with his class and then reinforces that lesson with the Gizmo. He has his students pair up and work through the Exploration Guide to go over the various concepts. This sequence has really engaged his students, and this difficult concept has become easier to teach and fun for students.

Mr. Mosby doesn't stop with classroom instruction either.

"I encourage my students to use Gizmos at home with their families. The students really enjoy showing their parents the things that they get to do on Gizmos at home. I think it gets them excited about science concepts that they would normally not be interested in."

Video -- Teaching with Gizmos: Whole Class Instruction

Recently we published a new video on our Gizmos YouTube channel: a 4-minute video demonstrating whole class instruction with Gizmos!

Take a peek into a 5th grade classroom where students are investigating the Mineral Identification Gizmo.

Watch the video above or see it on the YouTube site.

Ring in the new year with new Gizmos

We have released two new science Gizmos to start the new year. Both Gizmos are appropriate for students in elementary school through high school and cover highly requested topics.

The first Gizmo is called Dichotomous Keys. In this Gizmo, students use dichotomous keys to identify a variety of plants and animals, including California albatrosses, Texas venomous snakes, and more. Students can then try creating their own dichotomous keys for organisms in the Gizmo or for organisms found where they live.

The second new Gizmo is called Measuring Volume. In this Gizmo, students can use a variety of containers and tools to measure the volumes of liquids and solids. Students can fill containers from a faucet, pour water from one container to another, add objects to containers, and measure the dimensions of objects with a ruler. An eyedropper is available to add or remove small amounts of water, and a magnifying glass can be used to get a closeup view of a meniscus. Students can test their skills using the "Practice" mode of the Gizmo.

We hope you enjoy using the new Gizmos and wish you a great beginning to the new year!

Two new chemistry Gizmos

We have released two new chemistry lessons focused on the concept of chemical equilibrium: 

Equilibrium and Concentration

Equilibrium and Pressure

The two lessons use the same Gizmo but focus on different topics. In the Equilibrium and Concentration lesson, students observe reversible reactions to gain an understanding of why chemical equilibrium occurs and how equilibrium constants are calculated. The follow-up lesson, Equilibrium and Pressure, discusses partial pressure, Dalton's law, and Le Chatelier's principle.

We hope you enjoy the new lessons as we continue to expand our chemistry coverage!

 

Alejandra Guzman: ExploreLearning Educator of the Month

Alejandra Guzman has been teaching high school science for four years, first in Miami-Dade Schools in Florida and now at Stafford High School in Texas. She was named Teacher of the Year at Miami's Somerset Academy Silver Palms, and now serves on the Stafford MSD Technology Committee as well as the district's mentoring program for new science teachers.

Mrs. Guzman, or "Mrs. Gizmo" as some of her district administrators refer to her, started using Gizmos in 2009 and has been integrating them into her teaching practically every week since then. Since moving to Texas, she has been helping her new district get set up with Gizmos. She has also been presenting Gizmos at science and technology conferences around Texas, demonstrating their effectiveness in her specialty, Biology.

Mrs. Guzman points to the Plants and Snails as an example of how Gizmos can help save on lab expenses, avoid experimentation on live animals, and allow for faster data collection. Plants and Snails is also her personal favorite, because students often have difficulty understanding how photosynthesis and respiration are interdependent. As with many lessons, she covers the concept in her lecture, but then uses a Gizmo to drive and reinforce understanding.

"Gizmos are great because they are teacher and student friendly and they require no lab prep! They are very easy to use and all of the work (lesson plans, background, vocabulary, worksheets, assessments) are provided. Gizmos make teaching easy and fun!"

Gizmos contributed to a jump in standardized scores

The Atlanta Journal and Constitution recently published an article about the importance of science education in preparing children to enter the 21st-century workforce.

The article emphasizes how students are at risk of dropping out of school if they lack confidence in their ability to handle academic challenges. It then goes on to talk about how Gizmos, with their emphasis on deep conceptual understanding, help students succeed:

Kelly Stewart, a former science teacher at Ridgeview Charter Middle School, saw her eighth-grade students' science CRCT scores jump 8 to 13 percent in two years after she received a grant from SSEF to put Gizmos in her classroom.

“Gizmos gave my students online labs and simulations that we couldn’t have done in middle school,” said Stewart, now school data analyst for Fulton County Schools. The program is visual, interactive and allows her students to grasp concepts and make connections they wouldn’t otherwise.

To learn more about the effectiveness of Gizmos in improving student achievement, read about the research behind Gizmos.

Expert Corner: Gizmos and the Common Core

Featuring David Shuster, Ph.D.,
ExploreLearning Founder and Publisher.

Teachers and instructional leaders all over the U.S. are busy evolving their practice to reflect the rigor and focus of the new Common Core State Standards.  We at ExploreLearning are doing the same thing.

As with practically all modern math products, Gizmos are already correlated to these new standards. More important is to move beyond correlation to provide direct support for the key goals of the Common Core. With Gizmos, we had a wonderful starting point. Gizmos already provide myriad opportunities to develop deep conceptual understanding and strong support for the Common Core's Standards of Mathematical Practice.

But what does Common Core Standards mean by “mathematical understanding?” Here’s a key quote from the text of the standards:

"One hallmark of mathematical understanding is the ability to justify, in a way appropriate to the student's mathematical maturity, why a particular mathematical statement is true or where a mathematical rule comes from."

	Distance-Time Graphs Gizmo demonstrates the relationship between distance and time with a graph, and introduces slope and y intercept in context of this real world scenario. It supports Standards of Mathematical Practice 2, 4 and 5.

Over the years, Gizmos have been widely recognized as an excellent means to help students understand challenging mathematical topics and the “hows” and “whys” behind them. With Gizmos, students don’t just read or listen and watch, they learn by manipulating key variables and working with multiple visual representations. Compared to more traditional approaches, Gizmos help students to attain new levels of understanding.

In addition to content standards that define what specific concepts and skills students should master, the Common Core also defines Standards of Mathematical Practice. These standards define expertise that mathematics educators at all levels should seek to develop in their students. In particular, they state that mathematically proficient students should be able to:

1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.

2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.

3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.

4. Model with mathematics.

5. Use appropriate tools strategically.

6. Attend to precision.

7. Look for and make use of structure.

8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning

We have already heard from many of you that Gizmos help students to develop many of these competencies. But we want to do even better. So as part of our ongoing Gizmo Lesson Materials update, we are putting a special emphasis on the Common Core to ensure that both the content standards and the Standards of Mathematical Practice are supported as fully as possible.

If you have suggestions for how we can further improve, we would appreciate it if you would take a moment to send us your thoughts. Additionally, I hope you will consider sharing your favorite Common Core teaching ideas in the form of contributed lesson materials and recommendations for the Gizmos you feel really make a difference for you. With your input, we can make Gizmos an even better program for you and your students.

Missy Graham-Allison: ExploreLearning Educator of the Month

Missy Graham-Allison teaches Biology at Durant High School in Florida's Hillsborough County Public Schools and is one of the sponsors of the school's Science Honor and Competition Club. She has degrees in Biology and Educational Leadership and has been teaching for twelve years.

Mrs. Allison has been using Gizmos for two years to create new opportunities for her students to interact with scientific concepts. She turns to such diverse Gizmos as Cell Division, Human Evolution - Skull Analysis, and Rabbit Population by Season to bring concepts to life. She gives an example:

"The Rabbit Population Gizmo helped students to see how populations can be affected by different factors. Terms like density-dependent and density-independent limiting factors, carry capacity, and population density tend to be hard concepts for them. I use this particular Gizmo to 'show' them what the terms mean. My students feel that it gives them a 'visual' on what is going on instead of just getting the information from the text or lecture notes."

She reports that many students demonstrate a comfortable comprehension of these complex scientific concepts after working with this Gizmo.

Mrs. Allison also makes good use of Gizmos Assessment Questions. She uses them for formative assessment, but also to drive parental involvement. Parents are made aware when students do poorly on the assessment questions, and this helps motivate them to get involved in their child's learning. Working on a Gizmo can be a fun and engaging way for parents to learn with their children.

Stephanie Minor: ExploreLearning Educator of the Month

Stephanie Minor is in her tenth year of teaching. She has a B.Sc. in Geology and worked in both mining and oil exploration before getting her B.Ed. She is now teaching at the brand new DSBN Academy, an Ontario public school geared toward empowering students to become the first in their families to graduate from a post-secondary institution.

Ms. Minor has been using both math and science Gizmos for three years. When she can't get time for her students to use them in the computer lab, she presents them herself both to introduce and to reinforce concepts. For example, she uses the Density Gizmo as a highly effective intermediate step between a class lesson on buoyant force and a design challenge where students design a boat to float the largest load.

Last year, she also started using Reflex in grade 2 and in grades 5-8. She notes that even her eighth graders have had a lot of trouble with math facts but were of course too embarrassed to admit it. When she would approach the problem, she found they were "not inclined to do the awful, boring flash card type activities." With Reflex, however, she saw a real difference.

"Many problems were not ones of understanding grade 8 concepts, but rather errors resulting from incorrect math facts, or slow processing because of a lack of math fact fluency. Reflex definitely helped improve the students' confidence in math."

Stephanie has been part of the DSBN Academy design team for almost two years. While reviewing students' applications she came to realize that math was going to be a major focus area. Specifically, she noted that she would need help building their confidence in mathematics, and she thinks Reflex is the right tool to build that confidence. Ms. Minor has worked hard to ensure Reflex will be available for DSBN Academy teachers.

New lesson materials published!

We've posted 3 sets of new Lesson Materials today!  In addition, the Gizmos themselves (all 3 of these) were updated to gain some new problem types, so your students will be able to get more practice with more types of problems.  Check them out:

Dividing Exponential Expressions

Multiplying Exponential Expressions

Factoring Special Products

As usual, each set of updated Lesson Materials includes 4 documents (Student Exploration sheet, SE Answer Key, Teacher Guide, and Vocabulary sheet), all of which are available as a .doc or a .pdf.  (Note: You will need to be logged in to see all the documents.)

This brings us to 18 math Gizmos with updated Lesson Materials. We have a long way to go on the math side, but we're hard at work on it!

Hope these new materials are a help - to teachers and students alike.