ESLR Check

Being an effective learner is difficult to achieve at first, but I managed to learn and conduct this learning style. To begin, I am a person that has managed to be more organized with my work. I write myself a reminder of the homework we have everyday and I pass it on to my peers. I am taking notes quite frequently in math class and science to remember the lesson taught that day. As a result, I have been able to regain the information provided longer in my head. I do this with my senior project and science fair project as well. I'm always taking notes, margin noting, and doing background on my topic. I am currently working with a professional in my field for my senior project that has taught me so much already. It shows how much effort I have been putting on this project by my grades, presentations, and the quality I present to the teachers, research checks, and my presentations.I have clearly been improving in the way I learned.

Second semester I have so many ideas that I'll be working on to become a better learner.I have so much work on my plate that I came with a plan to make it through this coming semester. My idea is to go mostlyall technology base. I want to use google docs to keep all my files organize. I know this program acts like your backpack or suitcase. I'm going to use the google calender to manage my hw, service learning and my daily objectives for each day. I'm going to be finding other ways to understand my material and EQ like actually going to tutoring every week and work on a new project that I'll be conducting for my senior project. So, so far these are my plans that I want to achieve and will help me become a better learner.
What is an effective learner at I-Poly? A student who assumes responsibility and expresses personal creativity

Service Learning 10 HR

My service learning started last week at Citrus College. I was able to shadow a professor who teaches Astronomy and who has helped me a lot in my science fair project as well. I have accomplished exactly 10 hours this week doing an educational research project. I have not been in the class environment because the professor doesn't teach on the winter session. But hopefully I'll be entering her class in spring and experiencing the feeling of the environment. Moreover, the educational research project we have been conducting has been very hard to accomplished. The objective is to analyze the student's test scores to find some connections that might help understand the student's performance in the class. I have analyzed data, formulas, graphs, and understanding the numbers in order to come with ideas and anwers towards our objective. We have found some answers to our questions, but there is still much more to do to expand more in depth the data we have gathered. I wanted to say that I found out that the school board(whole staff) wants the professor and I to present what we have found. I am currently working on the presentation as well and making sure we are understanding the data, the subject, and all that. We have so much to do that it's going to take us a good amount of time to finish this project. I have also been asking questions about the subject field and teaching skills the professor performes in class. She has gave me great advice and I have helped her by giving her ideas that she can use in her class to teach. We make a great team and I am really happy I found her.

The follwing are some questions and anwers to our research:)

1. Do students who have had more math end up with greater gains in the conceptual part of the course?

    - plot raw gains vs. initial level of math
   
    ** Scatter plot does seem to show a correlation between level of preparedness and
                level of conceptual gain.

2. Are the students who have had more math less likely to drop the course?

    - Count how many of all the students have each level of math. Then do this again only
      for students that finished the course. Calculate the percentage of students in each
      category since the final number will be lower.

    **Surprisingly, the percentages of students at each level of math stayed roughly
    constant between the beginning and end of the course, indicating that students
    generally do not drop astronomy due to their initial level of math.

3. Are the students who believe the course will be difficult more likely to drop the course?

    - Count how the levels of difficulty expected by each student. Then do this again only
      for students that finished the course. Calculate the percentage of students in each
      category since the final number will be lower.

    ** Surprisingly, the percentages of students at each level of perceived difficulty
    stayed roughly constant between the beginning and end of the course, indicating t
    hat students generally do not drop astronomy due to their initial expectations.


4. Do students who perceive the course as less difficult end up with greater gains?

    -plot gains vs. perceived difficulty at the beginning of the course vs. gains,
    taking out the students who dropped.

    ** Scatter plot does seem to show a correlation between initial expectations and
                level of conceptual gain.    

5. What is the average normalized gain for all classes? Only 7.5%

6. How do the average normalized gains for all classes from F05/S06 compare to those from S11/F11?  Still to come.

Interview 3 Question Approval

Interviwee: astronomy professor from citrus college(my options are open still)

10 QTS:

1.       What makes the field of astronomy different from other science subjects?

2.       Is it important to have a good partnership between your students? Why or Why not?

3.       What type of techniques should be used to teach an astronomy class?

4.       Material content changes every year in astronomy, therefore, how have you managed to adjust?

5.       How do you think students in your class learn best?

6.       Are you required to cover any specific standards given by the school for astronomy or do you choose what topics to teach? If so, why are those topics chosen?

7.       Do you have any specific way to organize your material? How or why not?

8.       Inquiry has been to be a teaching method that is important in every science class. Do you agree why or why not?

9.       When a student gives you a negative feedback after a lesson, what is your reaction towards it and how do you change it?

10. What is the most important quality of a successful astronomy class/teacher?