Developing GRIT in the Science Classroom

“Better Late Than Never” …

Although it seems like ages since our Face2Face session, I feel like I have had enough time to reflect on my Action Plan and even start putting it in place. There is never a shortage of distractions, and admittedly I should have posted something weeks ago, but here we are.

I began the day bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and ready to learn and explore my practice. However, I also began with virtually no idea of what I specifically wanted to work on or how to improve it. After some discussion with @sregli (Another young chemistry teacher and coincidentally my randomly assigned Person-to-Introduce from the first F2F), I was intrigued by her idea of developing grit and problem-solving skills in her students, as well as relaxing the focus on grades and removing the fear of failure. I found myself reflecting & brainstorming on many of these cliché wishes and others, including the balance of teaching content vs. skills, and student engagement in the classroom.

I eventually settled on a goal that stemmed from my summer school teaching experience (Grade 11 Physics!). I want my students to be able to tackle new and sometimes unfamiliar problems with confidence and competence, instead of the “What do I do next?” and “Is this right?” attitude that I experienced constantly over the summer, including during tests! I’m happy to help out my students as much as possible, to guide and teach them everything I know, but we have to draw the line somewhere. I’m not teaching you “something new” (read: “something you didn’t study enough”) DURING a TEST!

My plan grew and grew as I further thought of ways to make my students more gritty, I was greatly helped by the crowd-sourced inspiration, and the similar projects of @rsutherland, @ggrise, @sregli and others in our Action Plan Group, as well as the steady hand of the experienced pros @brenthurley @ddoucet @egelleny and @lmcbeth.  Eventually it took shape:

“How Might We develop/encourage problem solving skills & GRIT so that High School Science students gain independence and set themselves up for future success?”

1. Get student input on topics & activities, to choose relevant and interesting subject matter
2. Develop problems with their input, or find existing problems

   

3. Give students the problems.
4. WAIT. Allow time for struggles. As students get stuck, provide them with some strategies (not answers). Encourage thinking and collaboration (Think-Pair-Share) and provide positive reinforcement (“You CAN do hard things”). Validate Failures/Attempts (F.A.I.L.)
5. Re-visit problems with new insight
6. Co-create success criteria and additional strategies/methods.
7. Repeat regularly – provide students with many opportunities to attack challenging problems.

Although I admittedly skipped the first step, I recently gave my grade 11 chemistry students one of these “challenge problems” – to calculate the cost of aluminum foil per atom. The catch was that I initially did not provide the students with any additional information or resources. They chose groups of 2-3 and after a brief brainstorming session (I had to enforce this. Some kids really wanted to jump the gun.) I allowed them to request more supplies or information. Ultimately, each group came up with some form of this method:

1. Obtain a piece of Aluminum foil and measure its dimensions (calculate area).
2. Weigh the piece of foil (find mass)
3. Using area ratios, scale up the weight of the piece to the weight of the whole roll (the length/width of the roll are printed on the box, but the mass is not).
4. Convert the mass of the roll to moles
5. Convert moles to number of atoms
6. Knowing the cost of the roll, divide the total cost by number of atoms
7. Report the final answer with correct units and significant digits.

Minimum necessary materials/questions are: a piece of foil, ruler, electronic scale, price of the roll, dimensions of the roll, molar mass of aluminum, and a calculator. Most groups also asked for paper & pencil or access to the white board & markers. Interestingly, only 1 group asked for all of these things on their first request. Other groups made a total of 2-5 separate requests.

Overall, this was very successful. Between my two classes of chemistry and 9 total groups, 7 came up with very reasonable answers, 1 made a simple calculator error, and 1 gave up. All seven answers were within about 10% of each other, demonstrating some variability depending on accuracy of measurements and uniformity of the foil.

For the first problem, I am very encouraged by the results. Perhaps my students are a little more gritty than I originally gave them credit for. Although, they are supposed to be “the advanced class” (Pre-AP). I will definitely develop some more problems and work with the students to develop additional problem solving strategies. Once students are equipped with strategies, they will hopefully be less likely to quit part way through a problem.