Saturday Strategy: Anticipatory Guides

Here's an instructional strategy to help active your students prior knowledge. It also serves as a great pre-assessment tool to help inform your instruction over various concepts. This strategy may be adapted for all grade levels. 

Partial video transcript:

An anticipatory guide is a great way to activate prior knowledge for students. The way this works is, as you see here, this is an example, but I believe there are many different ways that you can do it. But the overall gist is that you give students this before they read a selected text that you've picked out. There are several statements. 

So, on this one, there six examples; some of them true, some of them false. They [students] just go through where it says your opinion and they check whether they agree with the statement or they disagree. 

Once they are finished, you give them a reading and they read through it, then they go back. And based on what they read, they will either tell me whether the reading agreed with their original opinion, or it disagreed with their original opinion. If it agreed, then they don't have to do anything. However, if the reading disagreed with their opinion, then they need to come to this little section right here, this little column, and they need to provide evidence in their own words to explain why the reading disagreed with them. 

Now, in the past, when I've done this before, they [students] would try to get out of this part by going back and trying to erase it. So what I have them do now, is I have them use either a pen, or marker, or colored pencil, and they have to color in, or shade it in. If, for example, they decide before they read something that they want to change, then they need to call me over and I will initial off so that way they can't go back and try to erase it. Initially that's what they would try to do when I first started doing it anticipatory guides - is that they wanted to get out of the work trying to find the evidence and they would try to go back and erase this. 

It's just a quick way for you to pre-assess your students to see what they know about a topic and then you can use that information to drive your instruction. So, that is an anticipatory guide. I hope you like it. If there's anything about this video that you liked, or resonated with you, make sure to LIKE, comment, or share the video. And if you haven't already subscribed, make sure to do that so that way you can "Bond with James". As always thanks for watching!

Stop Making Excuses! Podcast Interview

I had the opportunity to take part in a podcast interview with Fred and Sharon Jaravata at Teaching Bites as part of their Teacher-Author series.  I was their second interview in the series and I had a great time sharing my story. If you're interested in becoming a teacher-author - then this is for you! 

Saturday Strategy: Counting Atoms for Interactive Notebooks (Overview)

The Counting Atoms for Interactive Notebooks is a FREE item in my store.  I wanted to take a few minutes to give a quick overview of how I utilize it in my classroom in case anyone had questions.  Feel free to leave a comment here or on the actual video. Start at the 0.15 second mark (as I had to use a filler for the Facebook LIVE intro to set up).

Elements 4D Augmented Reality App (Overview)

Augment your Periodic Table of Elements lesson with an augmented reality app! #chemistry

5 Days of Holiday Cheer - Facebook LIVE Reminder

Don't miss out on the remaining "5 Days of Holiday Cheer" dates! The best way to learn about what's going on is to subscribe to my newsletter, http://bit.ly/bwjnews.

If you've been participating, there's an opportunity to win a $50 TpT gift card (see comments in the FB LIVE video below).

5 Days of Holiday Cheer!

The holiday season is among us! First, I want to say thank you to everyone that has supported my work as Bond with James throughout the 2016 school year.  As a way to celebrate, I am participating with a group of fantastic secondary sellers in a week long holiday cheer of freebies, giveaways, discounted items, and much more!

What is the "Holiday Cheer" event? 
Well, from December 12th through December 16th, I will be offering a special holiday gift every day - ranging from freebies to discounted prices of particular items.

How does it work?
Individuals signed up to my email subscriber list will receive an email describing the holiday gift for the day. 

If you are not subscribed to my email list, then click here to sign up immediately so that you do not miss out on the holiday fun!  

Don't worry - this will be one of the rare times where you will receive an email from me on a daily basis (from December 12th - December 16th). 

I hope you enjoy the gifts I have in store for you! Happy Holidays!

Let's Unwind with Candy DNA!

I just covered DNA structure and replication.  I wanted to do something that would be hands-on, but at the same time be quick and easy for them to grasp (considering the fact that we are nearing the end of the semester).  I remember I came across a fun activity on the Internet years ago called, "Have Your DNA and Eat It Too", from the University of Utah.   The activity comes with resources and an activity that requires more than what I wanted; however, I modified the activity to fit it within a 90-minute block period.

The materials can be bought at your local grocery store: Twizzlers (or licorice), colored marshmallows, toothpicks, and tape (I used Post-It notes in conjunction with the tape).

The activity required that each student obtain 9 of each colored marshmallow and 12 toothpicks to create 1 DNA molecule (although, they didn't use all the marshmallows as directed).  Therefore, I had students pair up in order to help me save resources since I had to purchase the materials myself.

The activity is pretty straightforward as it provides students with instructions on how to construct their DNA molecule. Even though the activity mentions base pairing in the introduction, students do have to have an understanding of how it works in order to generate the complementary strand from the information given to them.

After the DNA molecule was constructed, students were able to twist the DNA model into the characteristic double helix shape; which they thought was "dope" as seen in the video below.

Students then labeled the phosphate, sugar, and 1 of each of the bases.  The activity calls for masking tape, however, I used Scotch tape and Post-It notes as a substitute.

Once all pairs were finished, I briefly spoke about DNA replication; at which point I had students model part of the process by using scissors to act as DNA helicase to unzip the DNA strands. 

In the future, I may actually have students construct the complementary strands from the leading and lagging parent strands.  However, the students were all able to do well on an exit slip and a quiz that I provided, so the activity worked out in the end. 

What are your thoughts concerning this particular activity? Have you tried it before? If so, leave a comment below and let me know how it worked.