What does awesome look like in my room

Awesome is helping your students own their education, learning, and outcomes.  Awesome to me is accountability of the students to accept the choices they are making.  I have been making a transition for several years now in environmental science and now this year in earth science where the students produce rubrics, lab questions, and projects.

I am hoping that by "owning" the process the students will feel more relevance and be personally vested in the procedure.

Here are a few things students have done:

1.  Students designed a project in which the class "built a house".  Students sent emails, made phone calls, and set-up appointments with contractors and building supply companies to learn about environmentally-friendly products and then organized it in a portfolio that they presented in a round table discussion to the class.

2.  Earth science students are writing their own lab questions this year based on the lab activity that we did.  Students write several factual, one inductive, and one analytical questions.  Students then answer the questions properly based on the type of question.  Students are finding this task challenging but worthwhile.

3.  Earth science students have designed and executed several labs.  For example a lab on surface area students came up with some great ideas, from melting butter in different forms, to snow in a cup versus spread out snow (good real-life application to the April snow spreaders), to medicines that are chewable (quiet reaction) to medicines that are swallowed whole for a slower reaction.

I also have taken advantage of technology this year by adding review videos to my curriculum.  When I teach ESRT charts, I post a review video and a few questions.  Students can use the videos all year to keep studying for the Regents exams and my cumulative exams.