TEA Collaborative Learning Group
Overview of Plan

French

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Team Members:
Jan French, Marica Alexander, Barbara Marin, Lydia Brashear

What is your role within your team?
To facilitate a plan to bring polar science into other classrooms

What professional growth goals do you and your team members hope to reach through this partnership?
1. Develop professional and personal relationaships that can be used to help further our careers and quality of teaching 2. Develop lessons into a cohesive unit on Antarctica

How will you and your team reflect on these goals and on learning and classroom practice (e.g., pedagogy, the use of technology, content, the process of science)?
1. Discuss how the individual lessons worked in the classroom in order to make revisions for future use. 2. Discuss & review state education standards to see that the developed lessons meet state standards. 3. Discuss & develop assessment tools for the students so that we know that quality learning took place.

Mentoring Plan (Revised from Orientation)
I plan to facilitate our meetingas in order to generate even more interest in the use of technology and Antarctic science. I will start the mentoring process by presenting an overview of NSF’s Antarctic initiative, the TEA program, and my parcticular experiences in Antarctica. From there, I will show examples from Rice University’s Glacier website, the ITASE’s Secrets of the Ice website, and the private Blue Ice: Focus on Antarctica website. Teachers will be able to see how easily teaching materials can be found, and they will be more likely to plan their own units of study. After the overviews, I will concentrate on how I integrated my own unit. Handouts will lead the teachers step-by-step through the same Internet research that my students perform. This will enable them to experience first hand what their own students will experience, again making it easier for them to plan what they would like to do in their classrooms.

Once the Internet research is completed, the teachers will perform hands-on experiments. These experiments will also be part of the handouts so the teachers will be able to take them right into the classrooms. Some of these experiments will include simulating glacial movement using a mixture of cornstarch and water, discovering the benefit of blubber on polar animals by using a mitt made of Crisco shortening, and experiencing visual deprivation through the use of flashlights. Another high-interest experiment is making a bracelet with UV detection beads, which leads to a discussion of the ramifications of the hole in the ozone layer. Teachers will also do an activity that takes them through the same process as Alfred Wegner when he proposed his continental drift theory. They will cut out each continent and try to fit the pieces together in a puzzle. They will see that although the fit is close, it is not exact. Then I will give them outlines of the continents that include the continental shelves, and they will realize, as Wegner did, that the shelves were once apart of the land, making a much more accurate fit in reconstructing Pangea. I will then direct the teachers to the TEA site, where a number of learning activities are available. We will review the activities and decide which ones we are most interested in. Each teacher will be assigned to teach at least one of those lessons to the rest of the group. The last phase of the mentoring will show the teachers how easy it is to follow Antarctic research in progress. Both the TEA and the ITASE websites provide direct communication through e-mail with onsite researchers. I think this the best part of the program, because classrooms can experience research in action and see what it takes to make discoveries that benefit mankind. I will encourage these teachers to develop experiments with their students that they would like TEA's to perform in the field. I will also encourage their classes to e-mail me questions about my experiences. A visit to the classrooms will be the culminating experience for the students. Being able to meet me, see the outer gear, and view the pictures I have taken will bring their studies full circle. It will capture their imaginations, nurture their own curiosity, and encourage them to reach for their own dreams.