Statistics for Teaching Science: Part 3 Getting Comfortable with Variance, Standard Deviation, Standard Error of the Mean, and the 95% Confidence Interval
The variance, standard deviation, and standard error of the mean are excellent methods for describing data because they convey the variability of the observed data around the mean. Anyone teaching AP, IB, Pre-AP, Pre-IB, or college-bound science students will likely want to know how to calculate these values, what they indicate, and how to contextualize […]
Making Thinking Visible
One of the gifts of teaching in the digital age is the ease of which a teacher can gather evidence of thinking and learning. Documentation can occur continuously allowing the assessment of student progress as well as the discovery of holes in their understanding. Each step of the thinking process can be recorded digitally using […]
Using Stop-animation Videos to Learn Concepts
Stop-animation videos are short movies made with a series of photos taken from the same position and a handful of items that can be moved about to create a story. In this 1.5 hr. workshop, you will create your own stop-animation video of processes or phenomena, to cover main ideas or convey detailed information. Through […]
Writing and Speaking About Data (DBQs and FRQs)
How do we talk about data? How do we write about data? In this 1.5 hr. workshop you will discover ways to help your student be specific, using the correct terms, in context, as they identify and describe trends in a set of numbers. We will play two games useful for building a working vocabulary […]
Statistics for Teaching Science: Part 4 Expressing Error on a Graph
Error bars are placed on a graph to give a more detailed account of what was observed. Although there are many descriptors that can be used to draw error bars, in each case the value is used to express the uncertainty or variability of the data. Error bars created from certain calculations are especially informative […]
Student-designed Experiments: Part 4 Drawing Evidence-based Conclusions
This workshop will focus on the content and demands of the conclusion section of a lab report, with applications to data-based questions and internal assessments for IB students, and free response questions for AP students. The conclusions drawn from experimental data must be limited to the scope of the experiment, but it is also important […]
Statistics for Teaching Advanced Science: Part 8 Choosing the Most Appropriate Stats for Your Data
This is the culminating workshop for the Statistics for Advanced Level Science series. In this session, we will compare the application of different hypothesis tests and discuss how more than one type of statistical analysis may be appropriate for the same set of data. We will look for the key components of research questions or […]
Statistics for Teaching Advanced Science: Part 5 Hypothesis Testing Using a Chi-squared Analysis
Parts 5-8 continue the Statistics for Science series to include the skills required in high school Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) science courses. In these workshops, we will learn how and when to use each of the most common statistical tests that are used to test hypotheses. A hand-calculation will be done using […]
Helping Students Give Kind and Useful Critical Feedback
One of the tools of student-centered teaching is the peer-review process. In this technique, students gather in small groups and present their work to one another. The audience of peers is asked to use their knowledge and experience to give critical feedback to the presenter so they can improve their work before it is turned […]
Developing and Using Models Part 1
In this 1.5-hour workshop, we will explore 2-dimensional modeling for use in Next Generation science and math courses. Whether it is a schematic diagram, a systems map, a simulation, a graph, or a computer algorithm, models are used pervasively throughout science to interpret, predict, and test the way individual variables interact to yield a complex […]