Blog 5b: Science Fair Proposal

1. What is your topic?

Teaching Chemistry 

2. What is the driving problem behind your experiment and the quote by an expert to support that problem? (Expert citation must be MLA format.)

“Some of the reasons identified for this failure are laboratory inadequacy, teachers’ attitude, examination malpractice, time constraint for conduction of practice’s, non-coverage of syllabus, class size, non-professionalism and environment.” - Lawrence Edomwonyi-otu and Abraham Avaa (Edomwonyi-otu, Lawrence, and Abraham Avaa. "The Challenge of Effective Teaching of Chemistry: A Case Study - Leonardo El J Pract Technol." The Challenge of Effective Teaching of Chemistry: A Case Study - Leonardo El J Pract Technol. N.p., 25 June 2011. Web. 14 Sept. 2012.)

3. What is your hypothesis? (Must be in If-Then form.)

If a school spends more than $500 on their chemistry department, defined as how much money each teacher gets to spend on their classroom, then their student's STAR testing scores will be Proficient or Advanced. 

4. Write a paragraph summary of how you will perform the experiment.  Include the tools you plan on using.

After collecting a list of schools contact information (using a phone book/internet), I will call each one and simply ask what percentage of their budget goes to the science department, from there, I will ask to speak to each of the chemistry teachers and ask how much they are given to spend in their classrooms and how much they actually spend. From there I will ask how many of their students scored Below proficient and proficient or advanced on their STAR testing by asking the school. (Can I check that online somewhere?) I will then try to find a correlation between the two using Pearson's Correlation. 

5. Select one of the following Project Categories for your experiment:
Animal Biology & Physiology
Behavioral/Social Science
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Chemistry
Earth/Space Science
Pharmacology
Physics
Plant Biology & Physiology
Ecology & Environmental Management
Engineering Research & Applications
Mathematics & Computer Science

Blog 9: Working EQ and Possible Answers

(1) What was the working EQ you used during your presentation?

What is the best way to effectively teach chemistry?

(2) Did you decide to revise your working EQ after your presentation? If so, write your revised EQ here. 

I am not going to revise my EQ at this time.

(3) What are possible answers to your current working EQ? 

1.  Make it relevant for the students. 
After researching for what seems like days, it has led me to this answer. If students think the subject matters, it gives them the motivation to want to do well in the class. They will then do better academically, and in the long run, they will have a better chance of retaining the facts. I know this will be my best answer, but my other answers shall be.
2. Give them independence.
Students have to learn chemistry on their on. They have to experience it, not just see it or hear it. 
And lastly,
3. Work in groups.
This lets students help themselves find the right answers together. Its like iPoly so I think I can manage that one.