Newark Academy Science Department Course Reflection 2013-2014

1. Select from the following:

Teacher

Mr. Bitler

Ms. Celente

Mr. Erlandson

Dr. Hobson

Ms. Hone

Select

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Course

Interactive Investigation

Interactive Discovery

Interactive Systems

Biology

Chemistry

Chemistry Honors

Physics

Physics Honors

Select

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100.0% (14)

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Slot

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2. Please rate how strongly you agree or disagree with each of the following statements below based on your personal experiences in this course thus far.
Rating Count

Strongly Agree

Agree

Disagree

Strongly Disagree

Not Applicable

I have found that my teacher explains course material and expectations clearly. I have received helpful feedback from my teacher on my work and performance. I have received timely feedback. I have been given opportunities to demonstrate my learning on a variety of assessments. I have been given opportunities to engage in independent thinking. I have found the learning environment appropriate and positive. The teacher has been sensitive to my needs. 64.3% (9) 14.3% (2) 21.4% (3) 0.0% (0) 0.0% (0) 14 53.8% (7) 46.2% (6) 0.0% (0) 0.0% (0) 0.0% (0) 13 64.3% (9) 35.7% (5) 0.0% (0) 0.0% (0) 0.0% (0) 14 35.7% (5) 50.0% (7) 14.3% (2) 0.0% (0) 0.0% (0) 14 35.7% (5) 50.0% (7) 14.3% (2) 0.0% (0) 0.0% (0) 14

42.9% (6)

57.1% (8)

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50.0% (7)

42.9% (6)

7.1% (1)

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answered question skipped question

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3. Describe your experience in this course.

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4. How effectively do the assignments, in-class activities and labs help you understand the material and develop your skills? Please be specific.
Response Count 14 answered question skipped question 14 0

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5. What has been most effective for you about this instructor's teaching? What has been least effective for you about this instructor's teaching?
Response Count 14 answered question skipped question 14 0

6. Which labs were most helpful? least helpful?

Response Count 14 answered question skipped question 14 0

7. Was the average workload for this course reasonable?

Response Count 14 answered question skipped question 14 0

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Page 2, Q3. Describe your experience in this course.

This experience has been somewhat of a struggle. After class, I often find myself having to go back over and the lessons and re-teach it to myself. I guess that's part of the beauty of the course-- finally begin able to succeed and understanding after initially not. I have to give credit to Mr. Ryan for clearing his schedule and providing so much extra help. However, this is not always that helpful (as you will see why in a latter response). My experience fluctuates between interesting and painful. There are times when I am genuinely interested in and understand the material, and those are the times when I'm even happy about homework. But then there are others when I am completely lost and frankly drowning in the assignments, which are both indecipherable and long. Personally, the class grew more difficult and the explanation of the material offered in the class increasingly unhelpful. Honestly, I learned more from outside sources explaining concepts more effective than the in-class lectures, and I grew more uncomfortable asking questions in class. Chem Honors has been a fantastic experience for me. It is a challenging course, that I feel really teaches me a lot about the subject. Mr. Ryan has been a great teacher, and he has really helped me to increase my understanding of the subject. He is very helpful, and I always know what he wants me to do and what I need to improve on. He is very witty, and his humor helps lighten the mood of class. I love this class, and I would love to take another class with him in the future. This is my favorite course this year. I come in every day excited because we have a lot of fun, but we also get a lot of work done. Mr. Ryan spends a lot of time addressing the specific questions of students, which is good. I really enjoy the challenging but reasonable difficulty of the class. Initially, this course was not too challenging. However, as the year went on, the material got more challenging. There were some points where I thought that the material could be explained better, but it is not something that was crucial. Also, doing formal labs was a new experience because writing them was a lot different than writing biology labs last year. I still feel like it would have been helpful to explain the way that we should write labs better before actually writing them. Chemistry has been a difficult course but manageable with enough effort. Material is explained well, although sometimes a little unclear with exceptions to rules and examples. The most frustrating part of the class is the learning environment. Class is extremely loud, usually with 3-4 side conversations and 4-5 people answering questions at the same time. At times there is cross-classroom conversations and the students talk more than the teacher. It also isn't helpful when everyone is saying the answers to everything at the same time and you hear 3-4 answers at once. A quieter classroom would greatly help the second half the year. My experience in the course has been one of hardship and academic challenges. Chemistry has been a tough course to tackle and certainly one that has taken up a lot of time and commitment to pass. I would appreciate more time of explanation and answering of my questions throughout the course to assist my learning. I would also appreciate in the future more answering of my questions because I feel that I am constantly ignored and whenever my questions are

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Page 2, Q3. Describe your experience in this course.

answered they are irrelevant and do not help me understand the subject further. 8 9 10 My experience in this course was pretty good. I've been mostly doing work at home for this course, but Mr. Ryan has been really helpful in class. Overall my experience in this course has been positive. Each day we learn new material and progress quickly. The course has been very challenging. The expectations were high and i have been pushed. I think that it would be much more helpful to have more thorough review sessions. The students are told that any problem from the master document are fair game, yet it is hard for the students to review over a hundred problems for the test. THe students should receive a more concise review sheet, so that they can prepare for the test better. I switched from Chemistry regular to Chemistry Honors. I found Chem regular very easy, but Chem honors very difficult. I was very surprised how much more difficult Chem honors is. It's pretty strange. This class is full of information and it is an extremely fast paced class. Towards the beginning I felt overwhelmed but once I got time management down I began to like the class. Mr. Ryan has been able to meet with me out of class and has provided tons of help for labs, tests, and other projects. Class time is very fun but I am still able to learn. Course is a lot of work, but all concepts are covered thoroughly so the student can understand. It has been interesting. Jan 6, 2014 9:51 AM Jan 6, 2014 9:49 AM Jan 6, 2014 9:49 AM

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Page 2, Q4. How effectively do the assignments, in-class activities and labs help you understand the material and develop your skills? Please be specific.

I think the assignments are very effective. The homework provides a lot of practice and a variety of problems. The activities, especially the labs, so give insight to what we are learning. Also, Mr. Ryan sometimes makes good connections to clarify material. However, doing class problems, is not always a helpful activity, so to speak, because sometimes I don't understand the problems, and if I didn't understand the material then I'm kind of lost. If I actually understood the material, the assignments were reasonable. They were often long, but they were well organized into easy and difficult problems and came with the correct answers which we could use to check our own. The labs were relevant to the material and helped me develop skills in both the topic we were covering and the lab process. The precipitate lab especially gave me a lot of practice in balancing equations and understanding how to apply states of matter. The first few labs dealing with measurement and calculating density helped establish a necessary skill set in gathering information. The homework can sometimes be long, but it is very effective and is excellent practice. The tests are challenging (in a good way) and help solidify our understanding of the material. The labs also help me to understand the material by showing me how different aspects of reactions work, and help to give me a more tangible experience. I especially enjoyed the recent hydration lab, which really helped me to understand the properties and theory behind hydration. Yes. Go Mr. Ryan!! The assignments and in-class activities were effective, especially doing a ton of problems on the master document. The formal labs did not help as much but were still a useful tool. This is partially because I wasn't completely sure how to do them initially. The homework and in-class activities are helpful in understanding the material. The homework assignments can be quite challenging and time-consuming. There has been many assigned questions from the "master document" that are mostly filled with questions that are too challenging for the test and are not on it, therefore, irrelevant because I spend too much time focusing on the problems for the test and to understand, making the easier problems found on the test ignored. The labs are graded harshly and I find it hard to form conclusions due to my lack of understanding with what is going on during the lab. Overall, I feel that if I understood the material better, and did not have to learn it more on my own, I would prosper in this class because it relates to all of assignments and in-class activities/labs. They really do help me understand the material. The density lab helped me comprehend that chapter, but the precipitate lab didn't help as much. The in class activities have helped me to understand the material and develop my skills. The labs have helped are

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Page 2, Q4. How effectively do the assignments, in-class activities and labs help you understand the material and develop your skills? Please be specific.

always related to the topics at hand and have been very helpful. 10 11 12 Yea i mean i feel i understand the assignments, but the test problems are always harder than the in class problems. The homework and the labs are always good practice for learning. In-class notes can also be helpful, but it would be nice to have a smaller class so that more individual questions could be answered. Even though there is a ton of homework, and sometimes there is too much, it does help reenforce lessons. The labs are well spaced which makes it easier. There were a large variety of labs which made sure that we were learning different things. Homework assignments, labs, and in-classs activities correlate directly with the material being learned. Doing the in class assignments help prepare me for the tests and review the material. Jan 6, 2014 9:49 AM Jan 6, 2014 9:49 AM Jan 6, 2014 9:48 AM

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Page 2, Q5. What has been most effective for you about this instructor's teaching? What has been least effective for you about this instructor's teaching?

Not sure about the most effective. Least effective, although Mr. Ryan clears his schedule for extra help, so many people need extra help that it is hard to get help that suits each individuals needs. During extra help, it's sort of like fighting for help/attention. Although, not always. The most effective for me was the choice of labs, which really helped me understand the material. I also like how we go over the homework at the beginning of each class to clear up any issues. The least effective have been the lectures, where he puts notes on the screen and goes through them. I copied the notes but often didn't know what I was writing because we were going too fast, and it felt wrong to make him slow down. I think that Mr. Ryan's class lectures and labs are really interesting and helpful in bettering my understanding of chemistry. However, I feel like his homework assignments can be too long. I like the lectures. The most effective the practice problems on the master document and going over the problems in class. The least effective thing is that everything is not always as thoroughly explained. Seeing things drawn out is very effective and real examples of things helped. Letting us figure things out has been ineffective, although that may be part of the honors course. I think the least effective is Mr. Ryan's lack of explanation of crucial subjects. I think his most effective teaching technique is reviewing the labs/tests after they were taken. However, I wish that I knew the material better before the tests/labs and I believe Mr. Ryan needs to improve his review periods before the tests are taken or the labs are handed in. He goes over the material that people have trouble with in depth which really helps with the understanding. The lesson plans with the powerpoints were the most effective, sometimes he does not explain well. The teacher tends to move quickly, which helps manage time efficiency, yet it is very easy for me to get lost during lessons. I often have to go home and learn the stuff by myself. The most effective part of the instructor's teaching was his one-on-one meetings and group reviews after school. I cannot think of a method of teaching that was ineffective. He is always encouraging to meet with him out of class, and that has definitely been the biggest help. The least effective thing is sometimes we don't go over all of the homework. Most effective- In class examples Least effective- N/A

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Page 2, Q5. What has been most effective for you about this instructor's teaching? What has been least effective for you about this instructor's teaching?

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His knowledge of the subject. He works too fast sometimes and he doesn't explain in depth.

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Page 2, Q6. Which labs were most helpful? least helpful?

The most helpful lab was the making and naming structures. This gave me a lot of practice which prepared me for the test pretty well, and made it so that I didn't have to spend too much time on that section. That lab was great! In retrospect the period trends lab was also pretty helpful although I don't think it was explained as clearly as it should have been initially. I can't really think of a lab that didn't help a lot. They all either furthered lessons or gave some sort of crucial insight to things we would learn down the road. The most helpful was the precipitate lab, which as I mentioned before helped develop balancing equation skills. The least helpful was probably the periodic table lab, which involved a lot of data entering and it was incredible time consuming and not very helpful. The hydration lab was really effective in teaching me about hydrates and stoichiometry. I really didn't learn much from the penny isotope lab. The labs that were conducted formally were very helpful and I felt had a specific purpose. The labs that were done very informally felt kind of just like "filler" labs and a waste of time, especially the online and modeling activities. The labs that were most effective were the penny lab and the precipitate lab. The least effective was the water of hydration one. The measurement lab was helpful for the rest of the year. No lab was not helpful. I believe the most helpful lab was the one with all of the decomposition reactions because they helped me practice how to write them out and understand it because it was so repetitive. I believe the least helpful lab was the most recent because it was not explained to me completely. The most helpful lab was the density, penny, and online structure lab. The least helpful was the precipitate lab. The making and naming structures and the periodic trends lab were the most helpful while the penny lab and online structure were the least. Both were helpful, i feel that are expectations are explained after the labs sometimes. For example in the last lab on the hydrate, we weren't told to think more analytically till after the lab, which may have seemed obvious to the teacher, but it was not to the students. I did not find the penny lab particularly helpful, but the hydration lab was. The penny lab and precipitate labs were the most helpful since they gave extra practice for the hard math projects.

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Page 2, Q6. Which labs were most helpful? least helpful?

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Most helpful- Precipitate- showed how equations actually form Least helpful- Online- Did not show real life situation One helpful lab was the precipitate lab as it helped a lot for the test.

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Page 2, Q7. Was the average workload for this course reasonable?

Not really. Well, it doesn't follow the 45 minutes per class rule. It takes up a lot of time considering all the reading (and not just reading, but to fully understand the material), then doing problems which can be very-time consuming, and then if I didn't understand the material in class, I would have to review that because everything is accumulative. Labs, as expected, are pretty long as well. I don't think I am the only student that experiences this, but I think we have all gotten through itfor the most part. Sometimes the assignments were both difficult and long and involved a lot of reading, so it was a challenge to balance the workload with the assignments from other classes. It was reasonable most of the time, though. The workload sometimes fluctuates, but it is generally a challenging but reasonable workload, however I think that the amount of homework should be lessened a little. Yes. Not unreasonable by any means. The average workload for this class was reasonable, Yes it was reasonable. I believe the homework is too long with challenging problems. It's pretty reasonable since I take about an hour to an hour and 45 minutes which is reasonable for this honors course. Yes, however sometimes there is a ridiculous amount of repetitive homework problems. The workload was a ton, the students get a lot of homework, but i guess it's necessary for the tests. No. I spent three hours or more on some of the assignments and never completed it in under an hour and a half. It was a good amount The average workload was a little much, and sometimes homework problems were not fully explained in class, however teacher provides problems from all topics that need to be covered. The tests are hard and there is a lot of work.

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