STAO Friday

The Science Teacher's Association of Ontario's annual conference is one that I try to get to every year, because I know that I will always come away with new ideas. This year's conference took place last weekend (right before my marks were due) and as usual, I came back brimming with inspiration.

Session 1: Inquiry-Based Learning in Senior Chemistry with Minor Tweaks in Your Lesson with Blunky Ng

Thanks to construction on Lawrence, my bus was slightly late so I arrived to a standing-room only, spilling out the doors session. I don't teach chemistry beyond grade 10 (for good reason), so I probably won't use the specific labs she mentioned, but the main gist is: instead of starting with the theory and then doing a lab to confirm, start with the lab (without telling students what the lab is about). I already do this a lot in physics, but can I do more? The answer is, naturally, yes. I also think I could be doing this more in grade 9 and 10 science.

I didn't manage to get to STAO last year, so I don't know if the hour-long break is a new development, but it's much welcome. I had plenty of time to explore the exhibit hall, which they moved to the main floor instead of tucking it away, without worrying about missing a session. Sadly, I didn't notice the new Playground room and so missed out on helping to build the Rube Goldberg machine.

If I was truly clever, I would have gone across the street to get some lunch.

Session 2: Intuitive Physics and Why It Matters with Richard Epp and Rohan Jayasundera

Richard and Rohan teach first year physics at the University of Waterloo, and they talked about how they teach students to think intuitively about physics instead of just pattern-matching problems. We want students to learn to build their intuition so they can trust it; they can then take that into other areas.

My main take-away from this session is that I need to teach dimensional analysis right at the beginning of the course instead of waiting for the dynamics unit. It ties in nicely with the idea of Reversing the Question, which I want to try with the big-5 kinematics equations. Also, there is a fantastic intuitive approach for developing the equation for circular motion I'm really looking forward to using.

Session 3: Crazy Demos with John Caranci and Steven Fotheringham

John was my Physics Honours Spec. instructor and if you've never seen him in action, I highly recommend it. I'd seen pretty much all of these demos before, but this was a great opportunity to film them while he was explaining them. I also now have to go find an aluminum tube for an extension to the falling cow magnet demo.

And practice with my chain and ring. A lot.

Session 4: Putting It All Together: Blending Learning Approaches to Foster 21st Century Learning with Mathieu Morin

The MOE has put out a draft of its 21st century competencies document, and the gist is that we want to shift from just covering the content to focusing on deeper learning. Mathieu led us through his journey into adding all the acronyms to his class, starting with the basic class website, through flipping the class to make time for IBL, PBL, etc.

Small takeaways: watch one video in class and teach them the Cornell note-taking method; Office Mix is a plug-in to create videos from your PowerPoints; look to academia for ideas for thematic projects for PBL and "dumb it down" for high school.

He was the first, but not the last, person this conference to say something along the lines of "Don't try to flip all your lessons at once. I did and it was foolish."

Session 5: Using Design Thinking in Your Science Classroom with Bluky Ng

The difficulty I always have at this conference is there are too many choices; I usually want to go to more than one session at any given time.^* In this case, I got lucky since there was a typo and the Innovative Classroom Science session I had planned to attend was going to happen on Saturday instead, so I bookended my day with another great session with Bluky Ng. I like the Crazy-8s setup for brainstorming; turning it into a gallery walk with students posting additional ideas is great. Obviously I want to do this with the sci/eng club, but I also want to incorporate it into the physics and other science courses. I really like the idea for the grade 10 climate change: design something that will help a specific country reduce its effect on climate change.

As for the sessions I missed because I can't be in two places at once? Fortunately, STAO makes the presentation resources available to members on their website.

More on Saturday's sessions tomorrow.

^*Invariably, all the physics sessions are at the same time. Why?