Independent and Dependent Variables: Pumpkins in the Patch

I felt like my Living Environment students needed some more practice determining what the independent and dependent variables are in an experiment.  I also wanted to emphasize that when we graph the results of our experiments, the independent variable values go on the x-axis and the depended variable values go on the y-axis.

We were just going to work with a practice set we used earlier in the year, but would place the independent variable horizontally (x-axis) and the dependent variable vertically (y-axis).  I found this set of variables in the blog post on in stillness the dancing titled Functions from the Start.

The envelopes of the variables were in my binder ready to go.  Then I read Sarah Carter's latest blog post on Math = Love, and knew I needed to change what we were doing.  I shamelessly copied her activity, making a few modifications.   She called this activity "Ghosts in the Graveyard." I decided to call it Pumpkins in the Patch so I could use it any time in the fall.

After downloading her PDF files, I converted them into Google docs,  This allowed me to change the font and title. Otherwise the challenges are word for word.  We'll use pumpkins instead of ghosts, of course.  My other change was the answer sheet that the students fill out as they go.   Instead of just a table to fill out, I put some of what I learned in the teacher workshop I went to last Friday on using Google apps in the classroom to work.  To emphasize dependent on the y-axis and independent on the x-axis, the answer sheet is full of vertical and horizontal arrows that I put together in google drawings.

The left-over Halloween candy will come in handy for prizes when we do this in class later in the week. Each time a team of students finishes one challenge, they put a pumpkin with their name on it in one of the patches (big circles drawn on the white board).  Each pumpkin patch will have a different point value that all of the pumpkins in it will receive. At the end of the game, the point value for each patch will be revealed.  The team with the most points will get a few fun sized candy bars.

Here's the challenge document with the pumpkins.  Here's the answer sheet.

Maximizing Lab Report Feedback While Minimizing Grading Time

Over the summer a blog post caught my eye because it mentioned giving feedback to students without taking hours.  I loved this idea, since grading AP Biology formal lab reports takes forever. The post in Mrs. Brosseau's Binder reminded me that often I am writing the same comments on students' labs. I put together a Google form, trying to remember the most common comments I give when grading labs. I added all of the possible comments in the form and then also added the option "other" which allows me to type in whatever comments I might want to add that are not already on the list.

Here is the link to my Lab Grading Google Form.

I needed a way to take the information from the form that goes into a spreadsheet to give individual feedback to students.  One way to do that would be with the form add-on docAppender.  For my classes though, I found that the add-on autoCrat in Sheets worked best for me.  I needed to make a template for my feedback to go in, and then autoCrat makes a document for each student whose lab I grade. It took me a little while to figure out how I wanted the template to look and to get all of the tabs in to map the information from the Sheet into the template. Now when I grade lab reports, I can give my students rich feedback in a nicely formatted document. Then I just drag the newly made documents into the Google Drive folders that I share with my students. I love it!

Here's the link to the Lab Grade Template that autoCrat merges for me.

Grading labs comes down to these steps:

1. Create a Google Form to use when grading labs (or use mine).
   
2. Grade labs by clicking the comment choices in the form, or adding other comments as needed in the "other" option in the form.
   
3. Once you have graded the labs, go to the Sheet that is created from the form responses.
   
4. Make sure to install the autoCrat add-on from the add-ons menu.
   
   
   
   
5. Start up autoCrat and answer the questions it asks--such as which template to use for the merge.  You can already have one that you've made or use mine. 
   
   
6. After answering questions, start the merge, and viola! you have documents of feedback for each of your students.
   

One other explanation of my form.  I grade each section of my students' labs with a rubric using a score range of 1 to 4, but each section of the lab gets weighted differently.  In the end, it all adds up to 100 points.  I add the formula to calculate that in sheets so I don't have to.  Here is the rubric I use for grading labs.