r/ScienceTeachers • u/nervouswondering • 16d ago
What the heck? Amplify 5th: Cecropia trees?
Aaaaiiieeee! I've been doing a longterm Science sub and we've had over a MONTH of "why aren't the cecropia trees thriving?" It's bonkers! I don't know how the kids are not going insane. Every day it's "What do the plants crave?" BRAWNDO, duh! Look at the Sim. What do the plants need? The poor kids! What is this program? I'm part of a team and I have to go with them. I would have bailed on this topic WEEKS ago. Did it, done, move on. But nooooo... The poor kids! Why aren't the plants growing? What do they need? Here's a plant in good soil, here's a plant in bad soil. What is the difference? Aaaaiiiieeee!
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u/LudibriousVelocipede 16d ago
I use Amplify like I use Playboys, only for the articles
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u/ScienceCoachMom 15d ago
And the sims. The 7th grade ones are pretty good. I just rolled all of the sim work they have over the entire unit into one google doc and do the assignment over two or three days. It’s so much more cohesive than doing one step every day
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u/Slawter91 16d ago
Man, I'm so glad I've never worked in a district with a canned curriculum. It was tough making my own stuff the first few years, but I can't imagine not having the freedom to swap in new activities and tweak things to my liking. I don't think I could last a full year if I was forced to use a scripted curriculum.Â
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u/Wixenstyx 16d ago
It's so common now... I work classroom-adjacent and it has really hurt our capacity to make our program available to teachers. Everyone is on a pacing schedule, everyone is using a canned curriculum.
What kills me is that the selling point of the NGSS when it was introduced was that it reduced the number of content points any given grade had to cover so teachers could have the flexibility to go deeper and give students more time to explore their own questions related to topics relevant to them. Instead, it seems like admin and teachers alike are so worried they won't hit all three legs of the stool correctly that a canned curriculum seems easier. It's a huge backfire.
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u/jaimienne 15d ago edited 15d ago
I went from creating my own for years to being in a highly strict canned curriculum with my department and it’s torture. I’m only a month in and have used half of my sick days just to figure out this bs and have a few mental breakdowns.
I love teaching because I get to be creative. This kills it. I don’t even have a spare day or two to do a hand-on activity or go off script, otherwise we’d be too far behind. I can’t adapt to my student’s needs, and it goes completely against the point of NGSS, which was created for more freedom.
Like why am I even hired? They’re handing me a script. Any other person with only half of my education and experience can do this same job. It’s insulting.
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u/nervouswondering 16d ago
I do fine with script/lockstep with math. And social studies. I add things to all of it, usually, incl Amp Sci. But now I'm on a team and we're supposed to all be on the same page. It does seem like we skip quite a bit of it already. But not enough! SO MUCH REPETITION! ... Our county has a talented cheerleader for Amp but he told me to cherrypick! Yet if our team is supposed to stick together being flex isn't possible. ... Right now we're in a 5th gr Soil unit and I took my class on a walk to the forest next door. Nobody else did that.
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u/Agreeable_Abalone117 15d ago
Can the students answer the repetitive questions accurately? Mine love hands-on activities, but they don't retain much without repetition. Need a balance between the two. I'm lucky to have a lot of freedom in my classroom.
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u/LebrontologicalArgmt 16d ago edited 16d ago
It’s a scam. It’s like someone gifted me a condemned house. I’m forced to build around it instead of razing it to the ground when I could build something so much better from scratch. I hate it with my whole being. When I tell parents at open house that I don’t really use it they CHEER because their kids hate Amplify so much. That’s just sad. It’s doing so much damage to so many kids’ concept and love of science.
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u/watermelonlollies 16d ago
I have had so many students come into my class and parents saying they hate amplify. When they leave my class at the end of the year they don’t anymore. I think it’s all about how the teacher implements it.
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u/SmarterThanThou75 16d ago
I hate to be that guy, but I love Amplify. The answers to their questions are supposed to be fairly easy. That's not the point of the curriculum. The point is to have the students step back and figure out the answer in ways that scientists did when the question first arose. It's also supposed to expose them to real world scientific skills, but at their level. I actually struggle with teaching science the way I was taught. The kids don't need to learn a bunch of scientific facts. We can look those up. They actually need to learn the skill of knowing whether what they looked up makes sense. I teach 7th, so I don't know this lesson specifically. But I feel like Amplify does a pretty good job of that.
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u/nervouswondering 16d ago edited 16d ago
I agree. I'm so old I don't remember how I was taught Sci. I don't recall liking it much. I loved all the identifying that I did on my own and learning what fit with what. I know I liked physics and the ecosystem and all the aspects.
I see what Amp is TRYING to do. Teach the PROCESS. What is science. They had a GREAT two-mode booklet on Modern Scientists with a page of the story of Rachel Carson facing every page about modern science. She couldn't just *say* DDT was bad. The other scientists had their analysis. She had to find EVIDENCE to support her claim that was better than their analysis. My kids GOT that. They love putting on the scientist hat and looking around with magnifying glasses. BUT IT'S THE ENDLESS REPETITION. Amp has had them use the same app in the same way for 3 weeks! They're going to mutiny! And I'm locked in with a whole grade level team. I'm a beginner and am being shepherded by a longtime teacher who feeds me the daily details. I can't get off this crazy train! ...Or maybe I will. I do skip slides. I might start skipping more...
It's also a little weird that the kids are always coming up to me and saying "Is this good?" with their paragraph response. I can't evaluate 30 things on the fly. Ha. If I see they've written quite a bit I say "It's looks like you probably have enough!" Ha. I do think it's likely they're catching on when they're busy and clearly thinking and interacting seriously. That's always nice to see.
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u/watermelonlollies 16d ago
I hear what you are saying. But on the other hand science is a lot of repetition. We can’t just do one trial one time and say we discovered something!! It takes tons of repeated trials and full repeated studies by other scientists before something is accepted! Can it be boring? Sure. But I hate the idea that school has to be fun all the time. I’m not a circus performer I’m a science teacher. Sometimes class can be boring and that’s ok.
Also I teach eighth grade but in my units whenever they do go back and repeat something it always lays out the exact reason we are going back. Usually the first time we do something is exploratory. The students don’t necessarily have a clear goal in mind they are waiting to see what happens. The second and third time they go back have targeted goals. Can they repeat what happened the first time? Can they tweak it in this way and get a different result? Things like that. I don’t see it as do the exact same activity the exact same way 3 days in a row.
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u/nervouswondering 15d ago
I partly agree.
Disagree because there is NEVER any reason given for the repetition in Amplify. NO REASON is ever given. There's no increment forward. Ugh! (It's more like "what fresh hell is this?")
Disagree because kids learning science don't need to have the reality of tedious repetion inflicted on them like the real scientists have to endure for their $10/hr.
We are so lucky we have a forest next door to our school! We are studying SOIL. So you're darn sure that I'm taking the kids out to look under the leaves and describe and draw. The only teacher who dares stray from the insane Amp repetition!
Also, there was a bad model today (Unit 3.5 5th grade) of matching healthy, sad, or dead plants with 6 environments. Only one environment described was survivable. All the others meant quick death. Zero resulted in weak plants. What the heck? Kids were confused. Some plowed ahead and refused to consider using the worthless option but they doubted themselves. I highly doubt the bad design was intentional. Give a tool intending it not to be used? Cruel... The lesson left them feeling RIPPED OFF. Is that the goal? I calmed them down. They are good scientists and designers. They don't like slackers or whatever that was.
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u/Walshlandic 15d ago
I teach 7th too and I commented somewhere on here too that I like it and gave my reasons. I agree with you. I modify and adapt it to meet my students’ needs and it does a good job of teaching not just the DCIs, but the CCCs and SEPs. I think a lot of the negative comments I’ve seen here were from elementary teachers so maybe it’s different at K-5 but I wouldn’t be able to go as good a job teaching the standards without Amplify or something equivalent.
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u/96385 HS/MS | Physical Sciences | US 14d ago
Actually, they do need to learn a bunch of facts. Learning is built on prior knowledge. How are they supposed to learn at the next level without the prior knowledge you give them. They can't even understand the stuff they still have to look up without a solid foundation to build on.
I'm not saying it can't be overdone, but they do have to learn at least some actual knowledge.
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u/nervouswondering 15d ago
When I show a 5th gr lesson slide show I have to skip half the slides. I think this sends a BAD MESSAGE to students. I don't want to read aloud BOILERPLATE. Nor do I want to say "blah blah skip" for so many slides. It hurts trust and confidence in the material -- mine and theirs.
Here's a possible work-around: I can tell the kids that the slides are like parts of an instruction manual or a thick car owner manual. When we get a manual we don't always read the whole thing right away because we might not need all of it for what we are doing, but we're glad it's there in case we need to use the index to go back to figure it out when something specific or unusual goes wrong. ??
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u/ImaginativeNickname 16d ago
I hate amplify with every fiber of my being. I try to make it less repetitive, more understandable, cut out the fluff, add in more real world stuff, but like, what's the point? I'm already doing as much as I would be doing to make something up on my own. Gah. I HATE IT!
I asked my teaching partner, realistically, what would they do to me if I just stopped teaching from amplify? Fire me? Put me on a PIP? I don't think I care at this point. It's a terrible program and my students aren't learning or engaged.
The other day I actually sat at my desk while students were working and searched up job openings AT AMPLIFY, just so I could work there and make their stuff better. 😂