Sentence Starters for Peer Review on Lab Reports

 I am currently in the middle of a  New Pre-AP Biology Teacher Cohort since my school is adopting the Pre-AP Biology curriculum for our Biology students next year. Today we were talking about the Pre-AP Course Framework and model lessons and how they support our teaching. Then we moved onto challenges that we may have that are not specifically addressed in the teacher supports. As we talked about the peer review that was happening for the student developed model of the carbon and water cycle in the lesson, we discussed of the struggle that students have in giving valuable feedback. One of our moderators suggested that we provide students with sentence starters to help guide them to more valuable feedback. 

This idea immediately resonated with me. After every mini poster presentation we do in class, students provide feedback to the other lab groups before I grade them. Sometimes students give great feedback, but often it is not helpful. For example, a favorite feedback of my students is suggesting that students write more neatly. Since I don't take points off for penmanship, this is not helpful feedback for improving their poster presentations. Usually toward the beginning of the class, after our first experience with peer feedback on these labs, I collect all of the feedback post-it notes and we work as a whole group to classify the feedback as helpful or not helpful. This leads to slightly improved feedback going forward, but still not as valuable as I'd like. 

This year I'm going to provide them with sentence starters to use.  I am debating about how I will provide them. One option is to project the sentence starters on the TV for them to choose as they are doing their peer review.  I could also print them, cut them out, and let students grab them to fill out instead of just giving them blank post-it notes. I've made Google Drawing that I can project, as well as pages of each sentence frame so I could print and students could fill them out. 

Here is the link for the sentence starters to project.

Here's the link for the sentence starters that could be printed and written on.

Mini-Poster Presentations

When I look back at each year I've taught AP Biology since I returned to the classroom, I can give each year a theme.  Year one: survival (myself brushing up on all the content and the new AP exam), then year two: tweaking the alignment of the class with the Essential Knowledge statements and Learning Objectives for AP Biology from the College Board, and now year three: reflection and revision. I've changed how I grade formal lab reports (a blog on that will have to come later) and we've added a different type of lab report.

So, we're trying something new in AP Biology this year--the mini-poster presentation for a lab report. The formal lab report still has its place and we'll do 4 or 5 of them this year, but I felt like we needed something else to help expand the student's repertoire of presenting and defending their findings. I read the blog post on Authentic Peer Review by Brad Williamson in the KABT Bio Blog, looked at his linked resources and decided to run with it.

This week students picked their item to core and determine the molar concentration and water potential of. This is part of the standard AP Biology lab on diffusion and osmosis. Before the lab I had prepped the 0.2M, 0.4M, 0.6M, 0.8M, and 1M concentration of sucrose, colored each a different color, but didn't label them. That just gave an extra "mystery" for them to solve. Each set of lab partners also had a labeled and laminated tri-fold folder made from two Manila folders glued together and a huge supply of various post-it notes (even graph paper ones!).

They wrote their methodology as they went through the lab. Their presentations came together as they collected data and began their analysis.

Once the reports were finished, I gave each lab group a printed copy of the rubric I'll use to grade their presentations. Then all students had to go around to each report and make a suggestion for the authors of that report that they believed would help improve that report according to the rubric.  I give each group an opportunity to revise their presentation before their final submission to me. This process gives the students both experience with peer review and the ability to do revisions. Then I'll grade the reports using the same rubric.

After the reports are graded, we'll be able to peel off all of the post-it notes and start our next presentation.

The class enjoyed the process of putting the lab together. One lesson I've learned though as I've been buying specialty post-it notes is to encourage the students to write out their first draft on scratch paper and then transfer to the post-it notes when they think they're ready.