Tag Archives: instructional strategies

W.I.C.O.R

Anatomy & Physiology, AVID, Biology, Classroom Management, Day to Day, Science, students, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Any educator in a high school should recognize the acronym WICOR as an AVID instructional strategy.  Specifically, WICOR stands for Writing, Inquiry, Collaboration, Organization, and Reading/Real-World Connections.  AVID is an acronym for Advancement Via Individual Determination.  Most schools in  Southern California actively support AVID and the use of the WICOR strategies.  In fact, Heritage High School is a demo school for AVID.  All teachers are requested to use WICOR strategies in their teaching because it is active, engaging, and is academically beneficial to the students.

 

Writing strategies                                                                           

  • Cornell Notes/Learning Logs
  • Quickwrites and Reflections
  • Process Writing
  • Peer Evaluation
  • Authentic Writing

Inquiry strategies

  • Skilled Questioning Techniques
  • Costa’s Levels of Thinking
  • Socratic Seminars
  • Investigations
  • Questions that Guide Research

Collaboration strategies

  • Socratic seminars
  • Philosophical Chairs
  • Group Activities
  • Peer Editing Groups
  • Service Learning

Organization strategies

  • Binders and organizational tools
  • Calendar,s Planners, and Agendas
  • Graphic Organizers
  • Focused note-taking system
  • Study groups
  • Project planning and SMART goals

Reading strategies

  • Deep Reading Strategies
  • Note-taking
  • Graphic Organizers
  • Vocabulary Building
  • Summarizing
  • Reciprocal Teaching

WICOR in my classes. 

Writing: All of my classes, Biology and Anatomy and Physiology use many of these strategies on a daily basis.  For instance, my students are required to take Cornell Notes from readings in the textbook.  If a Crash Course video is assigned, the students complete a GIST Summary, which is far more rigorous than simply writing down notes.  My students have completed Quickwrites and Reflections (along with SMART) goals.  We also use a Science Interactive Notebook, which truly helps with writing, organization and reading.

Inquiry: ‘To date, the classes have taught about Costa’s Levels of Thinking.  In addition, the classes have participated in Socratic Seminars and Investigations (Labs).  I am currently working on having them create questions to guide research.  At this date and time, I am responsible for creating guided questions and asking open-ended questions of the students.

Collaboration: All classes participate in group activities, including Socratic Seminars, Philosophical Chairs, and projects.  I have recently developed a real appreciation for think.pair.share.  I have been using it a lot lately.  Today, the students observed a peer “grading” their notebook.  Then the two students switched notebooks and they graded the other persons.  This is not for a grade.  It is an easy way to have them create peer editing groups and evaluate what they each need to complete before turning it in in a week.

Organization: Although began the year with digital notebooks, I was unable to achieve buy-in from a large number of students.  When it began to impact my pacing, it was time to stop and switch back to a traditional ISN.  I also strive to keep my students on track with being organized.  I put an outline on the board every Monday that includes information for in-class activities, and homework information and due dates.  Some students take photos of the whiteboard.  The students were also given an agenda record keeping planner to use to stay on top of assignments.  The students fill these in on Monday and receive a stamp.  Last, but not least, the students have access to their Haiku (Power School Learning), where the assignments are also posted under Weekly Overview.

Reading:  There are lots of reading assignments in Science.  I also either create graphic organizers or have the students replicate one in their notebook to use for assignments.  I began using Desmos a while back, which helps with vocabulary building.  The students are also very familiar with the concept of organizing because their classes have been AVID centered for many years.

 

My classes have participated in Philosophical Chairs discussion, and more recently have begun reading up for their next Socratic Seminar on Cancer.  The students also regularly work together on group activities, such as creating a poster of Mitosis with labels and definitions.  They also recently completed a five-day project for Photosynthesis, culminating in a slides presentation.  I could go on-and-on, but for the most part, my instructional style lends itself most easily to this type of instruction.

I tend to be pretty reflective about my instruction and am always self-evaluating, to do that requires deep analysis.  I create a checklist based on the items and/or information I can find about the strategy.  After that, it is simply comparing what I already do to what I have not explored yet.  At least with regards to WICOR, it would appear I am on top of it.

Designing a meaningful warm-up

Anatomy & Physiology, Biology, Science, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Back in the block schedule day, I had an opportunity to provide students with 15 minute warm-ups.  Students were presented with a controversial video, ethical or moral quote, growth mindset message, or a simple question.  The students were required to write one-half page in their interactive notebooks.  Many wrote more.  Then, we had a class discussion about the topics.  Science students are amazing.  They quickly realized they had to really think about the topic.  I often said I did not want the superficial “skipping a stone across the creek” thoughts, I wanted their “throw a large rock into a lake and watch it sink way down” thoughts.  Of course, giving the students examples like this often led to deep thinking as well.  These warm-ups were deeply philosophical, ethical, created moral dilemmas, and essentially great for scientific argumentation, creative and logical critical thinking.  I miss them.

I digress.  Currently I am teaching in a traditional schedule environment, with two late starts: Mondays and Fridays.  Clearly, with such a shortened schedule I do not have time to divert from essential content if I am to meet the students’ learning goals, and daily objectives.  It was about this time that I was found a website Effective strategies for teaching science vocabulary.  There were many, many tips, strategies, and techniques.  I had an idea that became a great warm-up.

It is no secret that the amount of science vocabulary students must learn in a year is incredibly large; far too large to accomplish easily, especially for the EL students.  After brainstorming, I realized that perhaps it would not be so difficult if the students were given a cipher, so to speak.  I had learned about this website called desmos, typically used for math students, but easily modified for my purposes.

The first iteration involved students matching concentration style six prefixes with their meanings.  The second iteration included prefixes, suffixes, or roots with their definitions.  The third iteration added more rigor; students had to match their terms and then google a new word with the same prefix, suffix or root.  Once the students had mastered these different levels (naturally scaffolded as it went through different iterations), I added another step: a collaborative connection.  Now the students had to turn to their elbow partner and share the new words they had found for the same prefix, suffix, or root, and make a connection back to the original meaning.  Most of the time the connections were clear and obvious, but some of the time they were more difficult and required some creative, out of the box thinking.  The last iteration was simply to reduce the number of terms from six to three so the warm-up could be completed in approximately five minutes.  Then, the students stamp them.  We turn them in once a week.

At first, I was not sure this would work out well.  Then, I noticed that some of the students who usually require prodding were enjoying it.  Now, the students come in quickly and immediately look for the desmos code on the screen.  I have time for attendance and to walk around and help those who are having difficulty.  It is flexible enough for me to customize for a particular lesson.  For instance, when teaching photosynthesis, the desmos warm-ups had terms such as photo-, synthesis, chemio, and chloro-.   Yeah me, this was a big win.  It checks as lot of those instructional boxes: vocabulary, collaboration, critical thinking, creative thinking, utilizing technology for research, and all within about five minutes.

 

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References

http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/7079?style=print

https://teacher.desmos.com/