By Thursday, the second years were looking rather despondent as they examined the roses in Bottle B, while I tried desperately to encourage them to keep making their observations and wait and see what happened in the end.
On Friday, with the Paracetamol roses looking very distinctly the deadest of all, we talked through the experiment as a class, and concluded that we should repeat the experiment, on the assumption that, maybe, the dosage of Paracetamol was too high. For the new experiment therefore, we would use more bottles, with more roses, and also have some bottles with smaller amounts of Paracetamol.
Over the weekend, perplexed, I decided to do what I should have done much earlier – a Google search to find the amount of Paracetamol I should have used! However, instead of finding hundreds of websites with immediate answers I found only one which claimed that rather than Paracetamol, it was actually Aspirin which contained a particular chemical that acts as a plant hormone, the presence of which makes the plant retain water better, and hence the growth process slows down. This site also explained that often people can confuse Aspirin with Paracetamol as both drugs are painkillers available over the counter in pharmacies.
Evidently the textbook, written by some PhD expert in Biology (who had never met, or perhaps never even been a child), proved to be completely unreliable in this instance.
It was already past 7pm on Sunday night when I made this “discovery” so Rob and I made a quick dash to the nearest pharmacy to get some Aspirin. The next morning I woke up with a new nervousness – I had to convince the second years that we were mistaken the first time, and also the second time when we reassessed the experiment, and now we needed to redesign it again. I wondered if they were going to distrust science teachers from now on.
Rob was, on the other hand, cheerful and upbeat. He thought the best kind of experiment was the sort for which you didn’t necessarily know what the result might be. Which I agreed – to an extent – but nonetheless I thought it would be rather unsettling for a bunch of young minds which were beginning to find their bearings in education.
The second years, to their credit, were understanding and their enthusiasm didn’t vanish as I explained my findings to them. They came up with a good set up for yet another experiment and this time we would have two bottles containing different amounts of Paracetamol, two bottles containing different amounts of Aspirin and one bottle as the control.
So, in our last week of teaching at Nehemiah, we launched Experiment Take Two. By the end of the week, whilst all the other roses had wilted, some of the ones immersed in water with dissolved Aspirin, though rather tired-looking, were still alive.
I couldn’t help but notice that the students were relieved to observe a result that made some sense.
Perhaps our next project should be to write to the authors of the textbook with the findings of our Real Experiment. Suggested hypothesis: Aspirin, not Paracetamol, prolongs the life of roses.
Showing posts with label Teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Teaching. Show all posts
Monday, 2 August 2010
Thursday, 29 July 2010
Overdose? Part 1
After my first week of teaching Biology to second year high school (former Filipino streets kids) students in Cebu, it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t going to be enough to teach them theoretical things, and that if I were to try keeping them engaged I would have to somehow come up with something practical for them to do. There were however limitations at Nehemiah – for example, one doesn’t have the normal set of science apparatus which as a science student I had completely taken for granted. There is also no such thing as a science lab – the importance of which I was unaware until now.
And in my Biology classes, I knew it would not do to learn about animal and plant cells by only drawing diagrams on the blackboard without having a look at how such cells actually look. Unfortunately, the only microscope they had at the Nehemiah school is no longer functioning, so short of finding a huge sum to buy a microscope, we would need to be creative and improvise somewhat.
Going through the Biology textbook, dense with long definitions and historical facts which seemed a bit obscure for Filipino students in the 21st century, I was relieved to find an experiment which might just do the job. The hypothesis was this: Paracetamol prolongs the life of plants such as roses.
So, at the start of the second week of school, armed with a dozen of red roses which we bought on the roadside of a church, two tablets of Paracetamol and three empty 1 litre Coke bottles, I presented the project to the excited second years. We got busy filling up the bottles (estimating the same volume as best as we could, though without a measuring cylinder!), cutting the thorny roses (with normal paper cutting scissors) and crushing the Paracetamol (using a plastic bowl and a spoon from the kitchen).
The textbook did not specify how much Paracetamol to use, so I just thought let’s go for the usual human dosage of two tablets (which admittedly isn’t exactly very scientific of me, oh well).
Vaguely remembering that I didn’t use to make much connection between theory and practice in school, I tried to help the class apply what they had been learning the previous week – about scientific thinking and how experiments work, testing them on why they thought a certain way, and keeping the questioning until they gave me an explanation for their answers.
The second years share the chapel area with the first years, the classes being separated by a few blue hand-painted dividers. The chapel was also accessible by students from other classes during recess, so conducting the experiment in their classroom without risking having all the rose petals plucked out by an enthusiastic 9-year-old was impossible. This meant that each day I would have to ask a couple of students to help me transport the bottles up and down from our room on the third floor to the classroom in the basement.
Each day the students examined the roses with excitement and anticipation, but as the week went on, it transpired that perhaps we were discovering a different kind of result than in our hypothesis. The roses in the bottle labelled Bottle B: Experimental 1 – Paracetamol were looking very tired, and it seemed that they would actually be the first ones to bid us goodbye.
Next week I will write about what happened next!
And in my Biology classes, I knew it would not do to learn about animal and plant cells by only drawing diagrams on the blackboard without having a look at how such cells actually look. Unfortunately, the only microscope they had at the Nehemiah school is no longer functioning, so short of finding a huge sum to buy a microscope, we would need to be creative and improvise somewhat.
Going through the Biology textbook, dense with long definitions and historical facts which seemed a bit obscure for Filipino students in the 21st century, I was relieved to find an experiment which might just do the job. The hypothesis was this: Paracetamol prolongs the life of plants such as roses.
So, at the start of the second week of school, armed with a dozen of red roses which we bought on the roadside of a church, two tablets of Paracetamol and three empty 1 litre Coke bottles, I presented the project to the excited second years. We got busy filling up the bottles (estimating the same volume as best as we could, though without a measuring cylinder!), cutting the thorny roses (with normal paper cutting scissors) and crushing the Paracetamol (using a plastic bowl and a spoon from the kitchen).
The textbook did not specify how much Paracetamol to use, so I just thought let’s go for the usual human dosage of two tablets (which admittedly isn’t exactly very scientific of me, oh well).
Vaguely remembering that I didn’t use to make much connection between theory and practice in school, I tried to help the class apply what they had been learning the previous week – about scientific thinking and how experiments work, testing them on why they thought a certain way, and keeping the questioning until they gave me an explanation for their answers.
The second years share the chapel area with the first years, the classes being separated by a few blue hand-painted dividers. The chapel was also accessible by students from other classes during recess, so conducting the experiment in their classroom without risking having all the rose petals plucked out by an enthusiastic 9-year-old was impossible. This meant that each day I would have to ask a couple of students to help me transport the bottles up and down from our room on the third floor to the classroom in the basement.
Each day the students examined the roses with excitement and anticipation, but as the week went on, it transpired that perhaps we were discovering a different kind of result than in our hypothesis. The roses in the bottle labelled Bottle B: Experimental 1 – Paracetamol were looking very tired, and it seemed that they would actually be the first ones to bid us goodbye.
Next week I will write about what happened next!
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
F = m x a
When the summer ended, we discovered two days before school was due to start that the school here at CFA still had not been able to hire a science teacher, whilst the English teacher was no longer available due to personal reasons. What we also discovered, was that we were to step in to take on these lessons whilst they look for replacement teachers.
Within the next 48 hours Rob and I ploughed through the textbooks given to us for secondary school levels 1-3, only to conclude that the content was way too fact-based (and boring!) for children who may not be the most motivated bunch in learning. Most of these kids come from very difficult backgrounds – they either used to be on the street, or lived with abusive or otherwise dysfunctional families. The fact that the textbooks are in the English language (not their first language) doesn’t help either.
So the new challenge was to think of ways of teaching the subjects (General Science, Biology and Chemistry for me; English and Social Studies for Rob) in as interestingly a way as possible – to inspire the children to learn in the first place, but without compromising on having too little content / actual things that they could learn.
I couldn’t really remember how photosynthesis works anymore, or much about Newton’s laws, and was semi dreading my first lesson. I tried to think of why I had studied so hard in school, what motivated me, and why it didn’t seem to bother me that there were loads of facts to memorize, half of which I didn’t quite grasp until years later. The exercise forced me to rethink from first principles – about what is the whole point of learning about science, and its relevance in the lives of the children.
1.5 weeks later, I feel like I’ve been teaching for a whole month! The kids are absolutely amazing – they do want to learn, they are mostly attentive (with good classroom control techniques, which we term Tough Love), and they are actually very bright. But it’s also been very challenging to convey complex ideas to them as they don’t seem to have much of a strong foundation. I also found it slightly amusing to see how, initially, they seemed to be at their best when they were not listening to anything but instead were copying things from the board – I wondered if I was just the same, having been educated in hugely rote learning environments.
Today I just took over a class which my friend had very kindly taught last week when she was visiting the CFA project. It wasn’t the easiest class, as one-third of the kids seemed perpetually distracted. Despite remembering not liking being picked on by teachers in my school days, I found that paying attention directly on the kids who were not “with me” - working through the task with them whilst still standing at the front of the class and really encouraging them when they got anything right – actually worked, and it was fun!
Today we talked about F = m x a.
Perhaps I could reinterpret the formulae this way:
Fun in teaching = massive preparation x attending to the areas where kids have difficulties i.e. don’t move on until they understand what you’re talking about
Within the next 48 hours Rob and I ploughed through the textbooks given to us for secondary school levels 1-3, only to conclude that the content was way too fact-based (and boring!) for children who may not be the most motivated bunch in learning. Most of these kids come from very difficult backgrounds – they either used to be on the street, or lived with abusive or otherwise dysfunctional families. The fact that the textbooks are in the English language (not their first language) doesn’t help either.
So the new challenge was to think of ways of teaching the subjects (General Science, Biology and Chemistry for me; English and Social Studies for Rob) in as interestingly a way as possible – to inspire the children to learn in the first place, but without compromising on having too little content / actual things that they could learn.
I couldn’t really remember how photosynthesis works anymore, or much about Newton’s laws, and was semi dreading my first lesson. I tried to think of why I had studied so hard in school, what motivated me, and why it didn’t seem to bother me that there were loads of facts to memorize, half of which I didn’t quite grasp until years later. The exercise forced me to rethink from first principles – about what is the whole point of learning about science, and its relevance in the lives of the children.
1.5 weeks later, I feel like I’ve been teaching for a whole month! The kids are absolutely amazing – they do want to learn, they are mostly attentive (with good classroom control techniques, which we term Tough Love), and they are actually very bright. But it’s also been very challenging to convey complex ideas to them as they don’t seem to have much of a strong foundation. I also found it slightly amusing to see how, initially, they seemed to be at their best when they were not listening to anything but instead were copying things from the board – I wondered if I was just the same, having been educated in hugely rote learning environments.
Today I just took over a class which my friend had very kindly taught last week when she was visiting the CFA project. It wasn’t the easiest class, as one-third of the kids seemed perpetually distracted. Despite remembering not liking being picked on by teachers in my school days, I found that paying attention directly on the kids who were not “with me” - working through the task with them whilst still standing at the front of the class and really encouraging them when they got anything right – actually worked, and it was fun!
Today we talked about F = m x a.
Perhaps I could reinterpret the formulae this way:
Fun in teaching = massive preparation x attending to the areas where kids have difficulties i.e. don’t move on until they understand what you’re talking about
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