Monthly Archives: March 2015

Scaling My Microbiome Lessons

My final draft for my lessons was due on March 1, 2015. This was a stressful time. I still believe that my lessons need more refining.  Our project began with students analyzing dandelion growth for a month. Students continued to write and reflect on my project while waiting for the data to be analyzed at the museum.  Even though our data is back, we still are not quite finished with our lesson plans. I believe our plans will continue to change as time progresses. We are still trying to determine the best way to scale our project. Obtaining soil samples and planting dandelions should be able feasible for anyone who wants to replicate this portion of our experiment. Plating the soil may create some challenges. Hence, we have pictures of our soil samples from our Summer externship that could be used in lieu of plating. In addition, the data sets from our summer and student samples could be used in the statistical analysis of the soil samples. In math, students could use this data to make graphs, find measures of center and spread, and compare soil samples in the Piedmont and Coastal areas. This fits perfectly within the middle school math curriculum. I still believe that our lessons will continue to change as time goes on and are not finalized.  For example, the program, www.phinch.org was used by my mentor to analyze our different data sets. We found out earlier this month that this is a relatively new program and is still in it’s infinite stages. I did have my students navigate and analyze our data on this website. They also provided feedback as well. I am truly grateful for being chosen as a Kenan Fellow and am thankful for the opportunities that have opened up as a result.