Monday, September 29, 2014

Food Choice Investigation Rubric (Draft)

Thesis and Hypothesis (4 Skill Points)                         SCORE: _____
Criteria
4 (Mastery)
3 (Proficient)
2 (Approaching)
1 (Needs Revision)
Presents a clear thesis and testable hypothesis that answers investigative question
Hypothesis concisely but clearly establishes a logical, measurable, and testable prediction that explains the relationship between factors and food choices and is supported with a logical rationale.
Hypothesis concisely but clearly establishes a logical, testable prediction that explains the relationship between factors and food choices and is supported with a logical rationale but may not be obviously measurable.
Hypothesis concisely but clearly establishes a logical, testable, and measurable prediction that explains the relationship between factors and food choices but it lacks an explanation OR hypothesis establishes an illogical or incorrect prediction.
Hypothesis neither establishes a clear, logical, testable, and measurable prediction that explains the relationship between factors and food choices nor contains adequate rationale.
Data Analysis (4 Skill Points)                                                           SCORE: _____
Correctly identifies whether or not thesis is supported by data.
Specifically and correctly states if (and to what degree) the thesis is supported by the data, accounting for complexities and anomalies in the data.

(NONE)
States whether or not the thesis is generally supported by the data but does not discuss complexities – ex. data that does not fit trend OR specifically, but incorrectly states if the hypothesis is support by the data
Does not clearly state whether or not the thesis is supported by the data
Draws conclusions based on evidence
Correctly and clearly states a conclusion about the thesis that is supported by a set of data by analyzing several questions including open-ended and fixed response
Correctly states a conclusion about the thesis that is supported by a set of data by analyzing multiple questions including open-ended and fixed response
Correctly states a conclusion about the thesis that is vague or is supported by vague evidence OR states an incorrect claim with evidence as support
States a conclusion about the thesis with little to no evidence

Supports conclusions with specific evidence
Evidence refers to multiple, specific data points and/or calculations (ex. mean, mode, SD) to support claims.
Evidence refers to a specific data point and/or calculation to support each claim.
Evidence refers to general trends to support claims.
Makes vague references to data to support claim.
Reflections on Exp. Design(4 Skill Points)                                                SCORE: _____
Identifies relevant sources of error.

Clearly identifies and describes at least one relevant source of error that is NOT simply human error during the experiment.
Identifies and describes one relevant source of error that is NOT simply human error OR clearly describes a source of error that is simply human error during the experiment.
Identifies but does not clearly describe the source of error in the experiment.
Identifies but does not attempt to describe the source of error.
Describes how the data is changed by the error.

Specifically and clearly describes how the data collected was altered by the error.
Clearly describes which data was altered by the error but does not clearly describe how it was altered. 
Addresses that the source of error changed the data but does not explain its effect clearly.
Does not address how the source of error changed the data.
Identifies and describes limitations to the conclusions.
Clearly defines limitations based on the setup/implementation of the survey AND clearly explains how those choices impacted the data/conclusions.
Clearly defines a limitation based on the setup/implementation of the survey and acknowledges how those choices impacted the data/conclusions.
Defines a limitations based on the setup/implementation of the survey but does not explain how those choices impacted the data/conclusions.
Does not propose a limitation and/or does not clearly explain how the survey altered data
Content Knowledge (4 Content Points)                   SCORE: _____
Demonstrates knowledge of class/research material.
Very consistently demonstrates deep knowledge of researched material by correctly using vocabulary and explaining examples/statistics clearly.
Consistently demonstrates knowledge of researched material by correctly using vocabulary and explaining examples/statistics.
Demonstrates knowledge of researched material by using vocabulary and explaining examples, but with some errors or pieces of evidence lacking.
Does not demonstrate sufficient knowledge of researched material through errors or lack of usage/ explanation.
Supplies possible explanation(s) for the data.
Supplies plausible explanation(s) that is thoroughly explained using scientific concepts/ vocabulary from class/research and logical reasoning
Supplies a plausible explanation that is explained using logical reasoning and vocabulary from class/research.
Supplies an explanation that while possible, is very implausible and possibly illogical OR states a logical, plausible explanation that does not discuss content/vocabulary from class
Supplies an explanation that is very weak either in terms of logic or connection to class material
Applications (4 Content Points)                                             SCORE: _____
Discusses applications of the findings.
Identifies and explains multiple detailed examples of how the experiment or concepts/vocabulary related to it can be used in science and/or the real world.
Identifies and explains a detailed example of how the experiments or concepts/vocabulary related to it can be used in science and/or the real world.
Identifies an example of how the experiment can be applied, but does not support it thoroughly.
Identifies an example of the topic’s applications but without support.
Proposes new questions for investigation.
Proposes and describes new questions for investigation and logically explains how those questions could be answered
Proposes and describes new questions for investigation and briefly describes how those questions could be answered
Proposes and describes new questions for investigation and acknowledges how those questions could be answered
Does not thoroughly introduce new questions and/or the means to answer them
Writing Conventions (4 Work Habit Points)                              SCORE:_____
Communicates clearly and efficiently.
Very consistently uses clear language and follows grammar and spelling rules (uses 3rd person, past tense, etc.).
Consistently uses clear language and follows grammar and spelling rules (uses 3rd person, past tense, etc.).
Mostly uses clear language and follows grammar and spelling rules.
Comprehension is difficult due to lack of proofreading.
Properly credits sources.
Correctly completes an APA/MLA formatted bibliography AND properly cites within text
Completes an APA/MLA formatted bibliography AND cites within text with minor errors
Completes an APA/MLA formatted bibliography AND cites within text with minor errors but with clear errors
Bibliography, citations, or both are missing.
Thoroughly researches topic.
Uses at least three sources including at least one scholarly article.
Uses at least three sources including at least one scholarly article.
Uses three sources but does not include a scholarly article.
Uses fewer than three sources.
Helps reader to understand the experiment.
Thoroughly aids understanding of the experiment with a concise yet detailed procedure, clear data tables, a diagram of the setup, and logical sequencing.
Aids understanding of the experiment with a detailed procedure, clear data tables, and logical sequencing.
Complete understanding is hampered by a lack of completion of the one of the following: detailed procedure, clear data tables, and logical sequencing.
Understanding of the experiment is difficult due to multiple components being missing
Graphing Criteria Checklist (4 Skill Points)                                             SCORE: _____
Labels
£  Provides an informative title
£  Labels axes with units
Plotting
£  Ind. & dep. variables graphed on appropriate axes
£  Axes use appropriate scales
£  Points/bars are plotted correctly
Formatting
£  Uses a ruler to make graph
£  Graph is made large and clear



9/29/14

Tonight's homework is to continue revising your introduction and gathering data/surveys for Thursday. The rubric is posted separately.

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Student Surveys

Louise's survey

Christina's survey

Sara's survey

9/24/14

Your homework for the long weekend is produce a draft of your introduction - bringing either a paper copy or a sharing/emailing an electronic copy. Your introduction should be roughly two pages in length and consist of background information/research about your topic, your question(s), your thesis and hypothesis. Additionally, all of your surveys should be distributed, collected, and ready to analyze by Thursday, October 2.

Below are the sample thesis and hypothesis from class today.

Thesis: Teenagers and adults have different priorities that work to affect their food choices. Since adults face greater and more immediate health threats as they age, they are more concerned about health and these health concerns will have a larger impact on food choices than when compared to young adults. For example, Steptoe and Pollard (1995) found that middle-aged study participants were concerned with cardiovascular disease when making choices about low-fat foods, while young adults discussed interest in weight loss/control.

Hypothesis: It was hypothesized that younger students would report health concerns as being of less importance when making food choices (compared to cost, taste, etc.) than older participants would. When asked to rank factors that impacted food choice, participants that were 30 years old or older would tend to rank health concerns significantly higher than young adults aged 15 to 19 would.


Citation: Steptoe, A., Pollard, T., & Wardle, J. (1995). Development of a measure of the motives underlying the selection of food: The food choice questionnaire. Appetite, 25, 267-284.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

9/23/14

Tonight's homework is to conduct research in order to begin drafting the introduction for your Food Choice Investigation lab report. You need to use at least 3 sources and one of them should be from a scientific journal. Use your research to help you form a thesis (a general, broad statement answer your essential question) that and hypothesis (narrower statement that predicts the outcome(s) of your specific survey/survey questions). Your thesis and hypothesis will be collected and the end of class tomorrow.

To find scientific articles, I recommend using Google Scholar. Remember to look for link to .pdf and/or .html, so you can read as much of the articles as you would like.

Monday, September 22, 2014

9/22/14

There is no formal homework if you submitted your paper copy of the survey. If you did not submit your survey to me, then take the time to look it over and revise it.

All survey data must be collected by 10/2.

Friday, September 19, 2014

9/19/14

This weekend's homework is to revise and set up your survey so that it can be implemented next week. Review the comments posted upon and the checklist below.

On Monday, your survey should be submitted on a piece of paper or completed and set up on through either surveymonkey.com or Google Forms. Please reach out to me if you have questions.

Survey Revision Checklist

o  Did I include instructions with my survey?

o  Did I briefly explain the purpose of my survey (and without getting too specific)?

o  Did I leave out a space for the respondent’s name?

o  Did I determine my objectives for my survey?

o  Did I examine each question carefully?

o  Did I try to make each question into a structured/fixed response question?

o  Did I include instructions for each question such as “circle the choice, write the letter, choose all that apply, etc.?”

o  Did I work to make sure that my answer choices are exhaustive and have a range of options so that my subjects can answer in detail?

o  Did I develop the best list I could of all the possible, plausible answers to my fixed response questions?

o  Am I specific whenever possible? For example, do I ask people about a specific meal as opposed to just “when you eat?”

o  DID I PROOFREAD?


o  Did I ask a classmate to review my survey and try to answer all the questions to check for problems with the questions?

Thursday, September 18, 2014

9/18/14

Tonight's homework is to complete Assignment 4 and prepare for tomorrow's check-in.

Assignment #4 Designing Samples

The Student Assembly at Baruch College wants to determine which activity students would most enjoy: a dance, an ice cream social, a carnival, or a movie night. The SA has one week to survey students and gather the input it needs to make a decision. Because Baruch has a large student body of over 2,000, contacting each student is not reasonable, so members of the SA agree to contact a sample of students.

1. Several students have ideas on how to gather this information. Consider each of the following suggestions. Describe the advantages and disadvantages of each method.

a. Kira suggests that the thirty Student Assembly members should vote on which activity is most favorable.
b. Dorian suggests that each member ask five friends which activity they prefer. Therefore, 150 students would be sampled.
c. Jewel suggests placing a comment box in the cafeteria, so that any student can participate in the sample.
d. Matt thinks that the SA should select several professors at random and survey students in their classes.
e. Grace knows that the computer in the student records office can select students at random who can be included in the sample.

2. Describe a different method that could be used to generate a sample of Baruch College students to vote on which activity they prefer. Use what you know about sampling to justify your answer.

3. For each of the following sampling methods, identify the groups in the population that are underrepresented.

a. To obtain a sample of households, a consumer reporter dials numbers taken at random from a telephone directory.
b. A car manufacturer wishes to survey a sample of drivers, so he randomly selects the names of car owners from a list of vehicle registrations.
c. A college professor wants to know what percentage of young adults, ages 18 to 22, consider education a top priority. He obtains a list of all students on campus from the registrar and randomly selects names from the list.
d. A radio station wishes to examine the proportion of its listeners who voted in the last presidential election. They conduct a poll by asking listeners to call the station.


4. Now think about how you could sample the student population at School of the Future. How would you distribute your survey in order to obtain representative data.?

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

9/17/14

If you submitted your draft of the food choice investigation survey, then you do not have any homework.

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

9/16/14

Tonight's homework is to work on the draft of your food choice survey which is due tomorrow in class. Remember that the survey should be 5 to 10 questions in length (with at least two-thirds fixed response or partially open-ended questions), instructions, no spaces for names, a very brief of the general purpose of the survey/project, and a thank you to respondents.

Monday, September 15, 2014

9/15/14

Tonight's homework is to choose a topic of interest and draft an Essential Question for your food choice investigation project.

Below are the questions that today's classes developed.
  • How do peers affect choices about food consumption in SoF students?
  • How does the amount of time you have for a meal affect food choices?
  • How does hunger affect food choices at home?
  • How do parents/guardians/family affect food choices/consumption?
  • How do food choices affect learning or school performance?
  • How does participating on a sports team affect food choices?
  • How concerned are SoF students about their health when they choose what to eat for lunch?
  • How does body image affect students' food choices?
  • How does one's mood affect their food choices?
  • How does the class before lunch affect SoF students' food choices during lunch?
  • How does convenience affect food choices?
  • How does religion affect food choices? 
  • How does one's ethnicity affect food choices?

Friday, September 12, 2014

9/12/14

This weekend's home is to write a survey designed to gather information to answer aspects of the following question(s):

What do SoF students eat for breakfast? How are their breakfast choices determined?

Your survey:
- should be 5 questions in length (or more)
- only use a maximum of one open-ended/or two partially open-ended questions
- the survey should be typed or neatly written
- use specific, concise questions
- include instructions

Thursday, September 11, 2014

9/11/14

Your homework is to review the survey (one more time) and think about the quality of the questions and ways to improve them. After reflecting, you will choose 3 questions and rewrite/reword so as to improve them with the goal of eliciting clear, useful answers. There will also be a check-in tomorrow, so review this week's notes.

Questions to keep in mind to help you reflect upon and then refine the survey's questions:
  •       Were there any questions that seemed to produce lots of vague answers?
  •       Were there any questions that were vague or unclear?
  •       Did responders seem to skip any question or part of a question? If so, why do you think that was the case?
  •       Were there instances where you felt the responses were overly brief and hard to use/analyze?


After thinking about these questions, choose and rewrite 3 questions so that they can produce clear, useful answers. You can add or remove words, make certain pieces of text stand out, or add further instructions, hints, or examples of model responses.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

9/10/14

Tonight's homework is to revise Assignment 3 by:

1. creating a table and/or a graph to illustrate the data
2. supporting any conclusions by specific referring to useful portions of the data

Optional/Extra Credit - In addition to revising Assignment 3, carry out a thorough analysis of the data for 2 other questions in the survey.

See below for models of analysis/concluding.

Students in 11AC and 12AC seem to like chicken dishes the most. Over 20 percent of all respondents listed a food explicitly incorporating chicken. Other popular favorites included pizza and pasta, each reported as a favorite food in 18 percent of surveys. If the definition of pasta is expanded to incorporate macaroni and cheese, then it is the most popular favorite food among Food Science students, with about 1 in 4 students mentioning a pasta dish as a favorite.

When asked to justify their choice of favorite food, students overwhelmingly stated that the taste of the food was the reason of the choice. Nearly two-thirds (66%) of respondents stated taste (or a similar term) as justification for their favorite food. A familiarity with the food (or cuisine) was a distant second most common reason behind a favorite - appearing in 16 percent of responses. Interestingly, about 10 percent of students reported that the fact that a food (like pasta or pizza) could be served or prepared in different ways was the reason that it was a favorite.



Tuesday, September 9, 2014

9/9/14

Tonight's homework is Assignment 3 which involves:

1. reading each question in the survey (from the first day of school) and stating which factor(s)/determinant(s) of food choice it relates to,
2. choosing 3 questions of interest and analyzing all of your class' responses (or look at both classes!) in order to make inferences. The responses to the survey can be found in the previous post.

Access to First Day Survey Responses

11AC Front page

11AC Back page

12AC Front page

12AC Back page

Monday, September 8, 2014

9/8/14

Tonight's homework is to complete Assignment 2 which involves recording everything that you consume today (both food and drink) and then explaining how your food/drink choices were affected by at least 5 of the factors discussed in class today. Below you will find the charts you constructed in class.

12AC





11AC:





Friday, September 5, 2014

9/5/14

This weekend's homework is to complete Assignment #1 by completing the Reading a Scientific Journal Article Graphic Organizer for the assigned article. You should also review the syllabus/contract with your parent(s)/guardian(s) and get it signed.

Remember that from class today, you should:

1. Start by reading the title (thanks Patrick) and then the abstract.
2. Next skim the introduction looking for big ideas and the purpose behind the investigation.
3. Skip to the discussion section to find the authors' conclusions and the applications of those findings.
4. Finally, check the results section to find evidence to support the conclusions that the authors drew.

The 11th grade section should read and write about Why Americans eat what they do and 12th graders should read and write about Among young adults, college students and graduate practiced more healthful habits...

Reading a Scientific Journal Article Graphic Organizer

Title:

Author(s):

Why was the research carried out? What is the purpose/problem that this research addresses?


What did the researchers actually do in their investigation?


What conclusions did they draw?


What pieces of evidence support those conclusions?



What are the applications of these findings? And/or what are the next steps that authors propose?

Monday, September 1, 2014

Summer Assignment Rubric

The following will be used to evaluate your responses on the summer assignment.



Mastery – 4
Proficient – 3
Satisfactory – 2
Needs Revision – 1
Support of claim


Thoroughly supports claims with several detailed, convincing, specific reasons/pieces of evidence as well as refuted counterclaims
Supports claims with multiple detailed, specific reasons/pieces of evidence as well as attempts at forming counterclaims/ refutations of them
Supports claims with multiple detailed, convincing specific reasons/pieces of evidence but neglects to make use of counterclaim
Supports claims with reasons/ evidence that are not convincing due to lack of detail, specificity, or clarity OR not having enough pieces of evidence to support each claim
Demonstrates knowledge
Consistently demonstrates deep knowledge of material in readings by constantly: using vocabulary, explaining examples clearly, incorporating statistics, etc.
Consistently demonstrates knowledge of material in readings by: using vocabulary, explaining examples clearly, incorporating statistics, etc and minor errors or occasions for further explanation may be present
Demonstrates knowledge of material in readings by using vocabulary, etc. but with multiple or glaring errors or lack of a detail
Does not demonstrate sufficient knowledge of material from readings through errors or lack of usage/ explanation.
Credit to sources
While writing in his/her own words, correctly completes an APA/MLA formatted bibliography AND properly cites within text
While writing in his/her own words, completes an APA/MLA formatted bibliography AND cites within text with only minor errors
While writing in his/her own words, completes an APA/MLA formatted bibliography AND cites within text but with clear errors
Bibliography, citations, or both are missing or it is obvious that student is not giving due credit to sources through his/her style of writing
Writing conventions
Writes elegantly and in a sophisticated manner while very consistently adhering to spelling and grammar conventions
Very consistently adheres to spelling and grammar conventions
Consistently adheres to spelling and grammar conventions
Mostly adheres to spelling and grammar conventions