Hello readers with the first day of December is tomorrow, and I think now would be a great time to fill everybody what I have been doing with my mentor the past three weeks. Just a little background info for those who don't know my mentor is an AP Biology and Anatomy teacher at Ayala High School. I always come to his 6th period class which is Biology but ask about what he's doing in his anatomy class.
The first class I mentored with him. He was preparing his class for a test the next day. He gave groups of student questions relevant to the test the next day but also the questions were taken from AP biology exams from the 1970s to now. He told them to choose in their opinion the hardest one to answer and make a grading rubric, a guideline of what has to be mention in the answer to get a certain full or partial credit. The same session he showed me his practical exam for his anatomy class. My mentor said practical exams are test involving the student doing some kind of hands on approach to answer a question. His test was for the bones of the human body student got the chance to pick up the bones and examine them and name the bone and major landmarks on the bone.
The next session with my mentor his class was taking a test so he decided to go over what common core standards are and what he is responsible for teaching to his students at an AP level. He also showed me how to write out an AP syllabus to get approved by the college board.
The third session was when I actually got to see his class doing an experiment. My mentors next topic on his agenda was to teach his students diffusion osmosis and water potential. He decided to do three experiments two on the Monday and one on Wednesday and in between each session talk about what they did. The first day he wanted his students to see how a solution passes through a membrane through diffusion by measuring the conductivity of water surrounding the membrane containing the solution. After that we did another experiment after class that he was going to do with his anatomy class the next day. My mentor asked a student if she would like to do an experiment with us and be our guinea pig. He put a positive electrode on her right temple, a negative electrode in between her nose and right eye and finally a ground above her right eye. We measured electrical potential in the eye and told me the responses that the electrodes gave to us would be something he would tell his students to dissect and describe each individual spike and drop and they can seance he already showed them how.
The next session he made his class do a qualitative lab he gives them a question and as little information as possible and the students in groups must think what is the best way to answer it. They had the choice to choose as many time they will take data, how they set up their experiment and how long they want to take data for. My Mentor said theses labs are great because it makes them recall past knowledge and think what in their opinion is the best way to answer the question.
The last session I went to he asked me to write down what are his teaching methods. I notice that he like the students to try to figure out the problem themselves by recalling past knowledge. He wants me to now if to try to write out a lesson plan on any topic in Biology and try to use the techniques he use but also come up with some of my own.
On that note it seems that I have came to the end of my mentorship sessions. In total I have done 7 and half hours and learned so much more on my topic and ways to teach Biology.
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