Punnett Squares Walked So Mitosis Could Run

What if state test prep didn’t feel like test prep at all? We sit down at LACUE in New Orleans with tech facilitator and veteran biology teacher Christina Verberne to unpack a simple, repeatable system that turns anxiety into confidence and practice into real learning.

Website: spotlight4success.com 

Transcript

Christina’s Role And Background

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Welcome to Spotlight for Success by American Book Company. I am Devin Pentosa, your host. We are here in wonderful New Orleans at the LACU conference for 2025. We are so excited to be here with our special guest. Uh, this is Christina Verbeen. Christina joins us. Uh, she is with Tanja Pahoa Parish, is that right? Yes. Okay, and I understand you're a you're a tech facilitator.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

I am currently a tech facilitator, uh, specifically high school. I help the high school teachers and administrators integrate technology into the classroom uh with hands-on materials as well.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Oh, that's wonderful. And uh I understand previous to this you've been uh you were also a teacher within the parish.

Using Pretests To Guide Teaching

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Yes, I was a biology teacher at my alma mater, Lauringer High School in Tangohoe Parish for 18 years. All right. And I've thank you for your service. Yes, thank you. And I've used the uh the books and materials to help my students prepare for actually, I just remember first for the Louisiana EOC, the biology end of course exam. Okay, and then transition to the LEAP 2025.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Oh, that's wonderful. And uh can you tell me, uh Christina, um, how did it go in the classroom? Uh students took the test. Um, how would you use the materials in the classroom?

SPEAKER_00 1:30

So I use the materials to help as a supplement and to kind of track where they were. The pretest in the biology book uh would use, I would give that to them as kind of a beginning of the year to see where they were at, see what skills that they came already knowing. Um, from you know, elementary school, things like you know, ecosystems, food chains, food webs, a lot of times they were familiar with that, but kind of see what skills they were good with, what skills they were not, and then that kind of helped me better prepare and better track and stay on pace teaching the material. So concepts that they knew really well, I didn't have to spend as much time on. Concepts like genetics that they did not maybe know as well, I would spend a little bit more time on. Most of my students had a really good seventh grade science teacher that did punnet squares and things like that really, really well. So that showed on that pretest.

Checkpoints, Quizzes, And Exit Tickets

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Oh, great.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Um, so then I could spend a little bit more time maybe like on mitosis or meiosis, and this gives really good assessments. The quizzes and things I found were really good to use for um, you know, just kind of check their knowledge in the lesson, bell works, uh activities or end of ticket, you know, end of class, you know, exit ticket kind of things. But I like to use it, um, you know, assessing them little by little along the way to see where they were struggling, see where I needed to reteach at was really, really good.

Student Results And Score Gains

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Thank you for watching Spotlight for success. I am the chief operating officer of American company. We are located here in our headquarters in the Georgia.com. We look forward to hearing from you. Oh, that's wonderful. And um and what was the experience for the students after they took the test?

SPEAKER_00 4:02

How did they so all of my students always they came back to me and always said, Oh my gosh, Miss Verbeen, that was really easy. Uh, you know, so they were always they they felt prepared. Uh when scores come back, we were always top of the parish in the scores for biology. Not maybe not number one, but we were, you know, number one, number two, you know, usually uh at the at the top.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

So would you say the scores improved?

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Always, yeah. My scores always I always looked at um passing, you know, my students that were had some that, you know, test taking, you know, that they were scared to take the test or didn't do well before. So students that may have in the past scored like unsat or um approaching basic, they came back with a basic. Oh wow. They were like just it was always a level or two higher and just were just awesome. They they were they were really they were really excited.

Conference Goals And Updated Resources

SPEAKER_01 5:04

That is awesome. That is so great to hear. And uh now that you're here at at LaCue, uh what kind of things are you hoping to get out of the conference this year?

SPEAKER_00 5:13

So, really looking forward to updated resources. I know y'all have worked on updating the biology book, and we actually had one of our teachers in our parish work with that. So I'm I'm excited to see that updated material.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

We're so privileged to work with your with your parish.

AI, Hands-On Learning, And Real World

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Yeah, and we we had someone uh with the civics because the civics is coming up. We had another one of our teachers work with that, and so I'm really excited to see how our students um do in those areas. Also looking at all the new upcoming AI, things like that to kind of help also, you know, they can take some of the materials, put some things in AI to, you know, they've got content, but then kind of do some hands-on. Okay, here's here's some content with some hands-on activities that I can do. So taking a little bit of that and just making it more real, especially in the science. Hands-on in the science, making it real world, making real-world connections, that's what I'm looking for.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

Oh, that's awesome. Well, that's what we uh we plan on delivering. In addition to that, great score improvements. Let's get some more hands-on activities. And uh, we're really looking forward to working with you and the parish and all of Louisiana in the future. Thank you. Um, do you have anything you'd like to share with the LACU community as they're like a takeaway from this conference?

Final Thanks And Community Takeaway

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Uh, I guess just you know, go look, uh, great resources here. I'm really excited about all the updates. Y'all are great, you know, reaching out and uh making sure that everything is there and up to date and ready to go and easy to use.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Christina Verbeen uh joining us from Tanjipola Parish, uh tech facilitator. Thank you for joining us. Thank you.