TE 407: Photosynthesis/Respiration Clinical Interview Analysis

Note: Titles and parts written in plain text are meant to be included in your final report. Notes in red italics (including this one) are advice on writing the report that you can erase from the final version.

Name: / Partner:

Descriptions of Focus Students

Use the table below to give your students’ pseudonyms and a few salient characteristics (e.g., sex, grade).

Pseudonym / Personal Description

Understanding

Write a brief summary description of how each of your focus students made sense of their experiences with photosynthesis and respiration. Try to describe their own experiences, patterns, and explanations, not just what scientific content they don’t understand.

Checklist for Analysis of Focus Students’ Understanding. Check to see if your table and summary meet the criteria below. Erase this section if you feel that you have met all the criteria. If you are having trouble meeting some of the criteria, use this section to explain your difficulties.

·  Have you provided evidence in the form of quotes or samples of your focus students’ work? (If necessary, attach separate files or paper copies.)

·  Have you described how your focus students make sense of weight gain and loss: their experiences and their ways of describing them, patterns that they see in their experience, their explanations of those patterns?

·  Have you related their knowledge and practices to scientific patterns and explanations?

The table below may help you think of issues to discuss in your description. Feel free to write your own descriptions in table form, if you would like.

Student / Experiences: Examples of weight gain/loss, examples of plant/animal growth, death, decay / Patterns: Plants growing towards the light, what plants/animals need to grow, directional movement of matter / Explanations: Accounts of where substances come from and go to
Scientific Version / Measurement of changes in dry mass of plants grown from seeds in soil
Measurements of changes in dry mass of plants in light/dark conditions
Observations of plants with water/no water
Programs of weight gain and weight loss: Diet, exercise, etc.
Data on gas exchange in plants and animals
Tracing labeled atoms into and out of organisms
Mass measurements of decomposing plants/animals / Dry mass gains by a plant exceed the amount of minerals taken up from the soil
Plants do not gain mass without access to light
Plants need water to stay alive
Animals do not gain mass without access to food
Plants incorporate carbon from CO2; animals release carbon from food in CO2
Matter balance in substances entering and leaving plants and animals / Conservation of mass: Changes of state don’t change the mass or nature of a substance
Tracing substances: The substances that are present after a physical change were there before, in a different state.
Photosynthesis: CO2, H20, & light are used by the plant to make food (glucose) = the production of an organic compound
Cellular respiration: O2 & food combine to release the stored energy in food for use by the cell = the processing or use of organic compounds

Motivation

Write a paragraph or more on what you noticed about how each student approached the interview and their relationship with school, learning, and you as an interviewer. Be sure to keep track of evidence you saw regarding their motivation to learn. Did they act interested in your questions? Were they willing to answer both initial and follow-up questions? Did they go beyond your questions and show larger interest in the topic? Did they seem self-motivated? What evidence are your conclusions based on?

Implications for Teaching and Thoughts about the Interviews

Briefly describe your thoughts about how what you have learned would affect your teaching about photosynthesis and respiration. What experiences, patterns, and/or explanations would you emphasize? Do you have any ideas about classroom activities that would help students see important patterns or understand scientific theories?

Briefly describe your thoughts about what you learned from the interview. What do you understand about content, students, or pedagogy that you didn’t understand before?

Also briefly suggest ways that the interview itself or your technique as an interviewer could improve. How could you do a better job of using clinical interviews to understand your students’ thinking?

Attachments

Turn in your students’ work to your instructor with your names and the students’ pseudonyms on it.

When you are finished, upload your assignment to the class website. Remember:

·  Erase the directions in red italics before printing and uploading

·  The upload site is on the personal home page of the website. You will need to remember the class name and password to access this page.

·  You will need to use your personal password to upload the file with your name attached to it.

·  Fill in the blanks about the assignment and type of file when you upload.

9/19/05, Page XXX