Tag Archives: socratic seminars

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.

AVID Summer Institute

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

What a truly great experience.  For the second year in a row, I have been fortunate to be able to participate in the AVID Summer Institute.

In 2016, I took the Science I strand.  This year, 2017, I took the Student Success strand.  If all goes well, I am hoping to continue this year and take the Science II strand either during the year or next summer.

You learn SOOOO much during Summer Institute.  Your brain is on fire trying to soak up every last word, strategy, and technique.

This year I was especially fortunate.  I start at Heritage High School August 9th and the summer institute gave me a great opportunity to also meet some of my fellow teacher colleagues.  Those I met were super terrific.  I can tell the staff and teachers are all about the kids and collaboration.  They made me feel right at home.

Back to AVID, last year I incorporated a number of AVID strategies into my teaching, including using an interactive notebook.  I also began flipping the classes so that the students had an opportunity to review the lesson and take notes prior to our discussing it.  This was great.  The flipped part allowed the class to get much more into detail with the content.  It also allowed the students to come to class having processes the material a bit, and having really thoughtful questions based on that.

I learned what worked best with interactive notebooks, cornell notes, and time strategies.  This year, I plan to take it to the next level.  PUHSD has a 1:1 chrome book policy so I can go virtually paperless.  I am so excited.  I have been designing a digital interactive notebook.  Each day the students will be able to go to Google Classroom and select the links and/or copy into their notebooks the assignments for the day.  I am also going to save a lot of time by using content related material to demonstrate the AVID strategies.  For instance, the students can read a biology related article as we practice marking the text, chunking material, and summarizing material.

Some successful strategies from last year that I implemented were: Gist summaries, Cornell Notes, Interactive Notebook, evidence based discussions, and the Gallery Walk.  I also attempted collaborative group projects with Google Slides presentations using a jigsaw strategy.  I also utilized a ton of different type of foldables requiring the students to think about what they were learning and process it so that it made sense.

This year, I am hoping to build on these strategies to include: Focused science vocabulary instruction, selecting texts / articles specifically related to the phenomena being explored and reinforcing the content being explored, additional options for student choices, Socratic seminars, and Philosophical chairs.