We've had almost 200 comments this week on Earthquakes and Plates...Oh My! Students have used their best expository writing skills to explain how this theory works and where you'd see it in action.
Students can and do write well about science.
You have to make sure they understand the science and know the vocabulary
Pre-writing, brainstorming, etc all help students process the information...so while it may seem like it's about the writing...it's really about understanding the science well enough to explain it.
When your students are writing about content, do you find it essential to do all this front loading of discussion, using graphic organiers and vocabulary to make sure their writing falls into place? How do you go about this? I'd love to hear any tricks and/or tips you might have to offer.
What Happened? First, students used their words and ways to break apart science ideas that are sometimes hard to understand.
Matt started us off by saying
You don’t feel this but every day plates are smashing into each other, pulling apart from each other, and sliding past each other.
Maybe a bit dramatic, but you can tell he "gets" that there's movement happening all the time under our feet even if our senses don't record that information for us.
Maddie expanded on Matt's writing by then saying
According to plate tectonics, the whole entire Earth is divided into 7 groups that float on the interior of the Earth that is molten. Earthquakes are caused by two plates rubbing against each other; eventually one of the plates builds up pressure and then releases it causing an earthquake.
Several days later Hannah M took this idea and created an analogy to help everyone understand the idea in a bit more depth. She said....
Plate tectonics are the theory that the lithosphere is moving the continental crust that rests on top of it due to motion of convection currents in the mantle below both of them. This is similar to the motion of a sail boat. The sea moves the sailboat, and the sail boat moves the people, but only so slightly. In this analogy, the sea represents the mantle, the boat represents the lithosphere and the people represent the crust that shifts slightly on the mantle’s surface.
Do you like the "only so slightly" and "..similar to the motion of a sailboat"?
Another student, who has earned his own blog, called this the "War of Giants" and posted this description to start off plate tectonics.
Everyday there are extreme forces duking it out just below our feet. Who are the soldiers? some might think. They are our very own continental plates. Everyday they bump, slide past and crumple when they hit together to form mountains, volcanoes and to cause earthquakes.
Now I can hear students painting the picture of what this science idea looks like in their head!!! Without a doubt this is the kind of learning that will stick with them long after the test is over. (Thank you Rick Wormeli.) Have you had any luck in getting students to use analogies in learning their science ideas? It's been tough and has taken a ton of modeling, but these comparisons have started to pop up on their own, so maybe the work is paying off. What have you done along these lines? Or maybe you don't think this is a good strategy?
Next. You can hear the explanations becoming more and more detailed, using more vocabulary that comes with plate tectonics.
Anna, who posts on the class blog, continued the explanation in her post "Don't Eat Too Much or You Might Erupt" by telling us what the cracks were in the earth's crust and why these were important to understanding plate tectonics.
The cracks were the plates separate are called boundaries. If you studied the ocean floor you would find a rift valley a rift valley is where the plates separate. I f two plates collided they would make earthquake. Most earthquakes are so small they can’t be felt, but some will cause huge devastation.
And if that isn't enough, she goes onto say.
If a oceanic boundary and a continental boundary (types of plates)collided there is a possibility of the oceanic boundary sliding under the continental down to the center and adding water to the mantle to make lava and it would spring up and the lava would harden to make a mountain-like shape and create a volcano.
These students are all writing about the same assignment but in three different ways.
#1 Way
Some students who are still struggling with the writing process, the content or using good internet safety rules still blog under my wing as commenters to the prompts I give on the class blog. Their comments are held for me to moderate and approve before they appear. Usually I approve them and even if there are errors/mistakes, I post them and then ask questions that guide them to making corrections.
#2 Way
Other students have earned the priviledge to write their own posts in response to my prompt but for a variety of reasons they still do that on the class blog. This may be students who don't want to learn all the techie stuff needed to do your own blog or who may not have the time to put into it. They can write well enough, but the techie requirements keep them posting where they don't have to do this. Or I'm not sure of their ability to handle their own blog...either their writing leaves something to be desired or they don't show the internet safety responsibility yet.
#3 Way
And the third group of student are those that have their own blog where they respond to my prompt on the class blog. They compose and post their response and then leave a hyperlink back on the prompt's comment section directing us to read what they've written. I have all those blogs on my Google Reader where I monitor and moderate them....if needed I could still go in and modify something as the administrator of their blog. I haven't had cause to do that yet because everyone is very receptive to comments, suggestions and ideas I offer. A typical answer to my suggestions can be illustrated by GraceW's response..."OK, I'm on it" and shortly she expanded the information I had asked about, providing a clarification of what she'd originally posted.
You can look at the exchange I had with Maddie to see how this works. Eventually she wrote this description of the patterns of activity around plate boundaries which I think demonstrates that she "gets" it.
There are some patterns that go with volcanoes and earthquakes. Earthquakes usually happen near the plate boundaries from transformation boundaries. Volcanoes usually happen where an oceanic plate and a continental plate collide or near the plate boundaries or on islands where there is a lot of volcanic activity. Oceanic continental convergent boundaries happen near all of these things.
To draw these conclusions I didn't give them definitions. Instead I gave them a world map animation of plate boundaries and the location of earthquakes/volcanoes. They could turn each of those elements on and off until they were able to draw a conclusion about where all this activity was located and why they thought it might be happening. Then we expanded on it with another set of animations which illustrated each boundary type in action from PBS.
Wrapping it up for this week's work.
With over 200 comments and more from the individual student posts, there is so much more to demonstrate students were learning about plate tectonics. As the week progressed, they read each other's writing and the writing only got better and better. I know some "copied" each other's words, but really that was minimal. For the most part, the earlier commenters served as both good and bad examples for those that posted later in the week or who went back and amended their original work. Once they saw the quality of others writing, they all strived to be better.
How do you see the progression of student writing as they make their way through a writing assignment? I found it hard to coach both the content ideas and the writing...I'd find myself wrapped in seeing if they were understanding how the plates worked and forgetting to pay attention to their writing. Or vice versa. Is that a problem for you? How could this be mitigated?
Fantastic outcomes from your class. The number of comments also bears witness to this. I like how you give your students a choice in the way in which they respond to your prompt - write an individual post, add a comment or add a post on your class blog.
One of the best statements here, is that the students will remember this learning well after the test has gone by. Thanks for sharing this great work.
Posted by: Anne Mirtschin | March 05, 2011 at 05:08 PM
Another great post, Mrs. R.! Every time I read your posts, you challenge and inspire me. It's great to see how you approach some of the same topics I teach my students as well.
I am curious as to how often you have access to computers for students to work on. We have several labs available to check out for student use, although they book up about a week or two in advance. I try to take my students at least once a week and for longer stretches when working on bigger projects.
Thanks again for sharing! Janelle
Posted by: Janelle Wilson | March 06, 2011 at 08:44 AM
Thanks for the encouragement. You know it's quite amazing that things work out so well because when I start I'm not sure what I'm going to get at the end. I know where I hope things are headed and I know what I must make sure they know....but exactly how we'll get there and who will rise/fall is always a mystery until we go through the whole thing.
I really do hope that they remember all this long after they leave 6th grade....
Posted by: mratzel | March 06, 2011 at 05:07 PM
Dear Janelle,
Like you our school has several labs where we share/sign up. Right now is our big testing window and the labs are inaccessible until after the beginning of May.....May can you believe it?
So I have to piece into the library computers...where we don't have enough for a full class at once. I have several in my room that I've cobbled together from castoffs and grant writing and I bring my home laptop in. In the last two weeks, we've been to the lab twice but for block periods.
I think the prewriting stuff makes the writing time more efficient. When they get to the computers to start their writing, they have a pretty good idea what approach they're going to take and how they're going to answer the question. That has helped make their computer time really about writing and not getting the answers formulated or revising. The big trick we also use is that they type it into Word first...spellcheck and edit it there....and then they paste it into the comment windows. Of course, if they have their own blog this is unnecessary as the blogging software does most of that.
Hope that answers your questions. Thanks Janellle for stopping by...it is fun having another teacher with the same curriculum to look over their shoulder and see how someone else has approached it.
Posted by: mratzel | March 06, 2011 at 05:12 PM