Summary
Students in this school’s College Readiness Center program demonstrated skills in collaboration, research, data collection, analysis, & interpretation as part of a simulated veterinary college admission. Students were challenged to build their knowledge and skills of what a veterinarian should look for when assessing a puppy’s health. As a culmination of their research and activities, students created a vet sheet and had the opportunity to assess one of the Dean’s puppies in the classroom.
TIPC Ratings
Research and Information Fluency falls in the Target range as students were given the opportunity to explore their thoughts about factors that contribute to puppy health. Students were engaged in choosing and evaluating sources in a controlled environment using Google Custom Search to build their skills in this area. Students explored given data to draw conclusions utilizing the new knowledge gained through their investigation.The students further applied their knowledge to the authentic task of creating a health sheet for evaluating one of the puppies from the litter.
Communication and Collaboration is rated Target through use of Google Apps for Education. Students had the opportunity to set group norms and define tasks each would complete to get the job done together online. Opportunities to continually reflect on their collaborative efforts were also given in the use of the Collaboration and Planning Guide. Each day, students took a few moments to revisit norms and tasks completed to encourage setting new goals for the next class in each area. With the use of Google Docs, students were able to continue work on their project outside the classroom.
As the teacher facilitated each step of the project, the teacher formatively assessed where students were in applying their new knowledge to answer the essential questions. This was done through students analyzing data in a Google Spreadsheet and making predictions. Students were engaged in asking and answering higher level questions as they moved through the project as demonstrated in their research template and answers in Google Forms. Critical Thinking and Problem Solving is rated at Target level.
Students were able to collect all their new knowledge concerning what factors should be evaluated for puppy health and apply that to a creation of a vet sheet rating Creativity and Innovation at Target level. Students had their choice of digital tool to create their product. The vet sheet was used during the puppy visit for students to evaluate the health of the puppy and to give recommendations to the pet owner. They also used the data analysis and their graph to compare with the puppy’s actually weight and reflect on why the predicted was not even closer to the actual.
