Big Post Its Are My Favorite Teaching Tool!

Once again I'm going to share a strategy I used with Big Post It notes. They're just so quick and easy. And the students seem to like using them. This year my district is really focusing on literacy strategies in all content. This is great for me because that's one of the things I love to do. My favorite class in grad school was Reading and Writing across the Curriculum. (Just a quick note: If you have never used the following two books, I strongly recommend getting them and looking through them. They have amazing strategies for incorporating reading into your classroom.
1.)  Daniels, H. , and S. Zemelman. Subjects matter, every teacher's guide to content-area reading. Heinemann Educational Books, 2004. print.

 2.) Tovani, C. . Do I really have to teach reading?, content comprehension, grades 6-12. Stenhouse Pub, 2004. print.

 But getting back to the Big Post Its and the pre-reading activity I did with my biology students...I first learned this strategy in my Grad school class and have done it several times but then I was inspired to try it again after going over it in my Science Curriculum meeting. The way the strategy works is that you pick out key words from a reading (the reading could be a textbook, or article, whatever you choose), in this case I used an article. I picked out about 8 words that I thought were big ideas from the article and then I gave the students the words. In groups of 3 or 4 they had to write the words spread out on a big post it. Then I had them round robin to draw lines connecting words and writing what the connection was between the words. Then at the bottom of the page they made a prediction about what the article would be about. The next step is that they read the article and then re-write their prediction to summarize the article. The following is the citation for the article I used:

I used this activity and article during my ecology unit as a way to talk about food webs and how everything is connected as well as discussing invasive species and how organisms affect each other. The following are some pictures of the Big Post It Activity

This activity worked really well and the students actually wanted to read the article and were interested! Also it was a good way to start thinking about what I want to do next...Mind Mapping! My next unit is cells and I think I am going to try to incorporate mind maps several times. This is something I've wanted to do but I've always struggled to make it work. The activity I did was a good way to have the students do a simple word connection activity which is the basis of a mind map. So maybe teaching mind mapping in small steps will help! Hopefully I'll have some cool pictures to post for my next entry!

A new year, new organization strategies!

The new school year is off and running! This year my number one goal is to increase my organization skills and eliminate the clutter! In the past one of the biggest challenges I've faced is keeping organized, neat, and managing my stacks of papers. My plan is to try to eliminate as much of the paper/pencil tasks and worksheets as possible. I know I am pretty lucky because my students have computers and we use a program called blackboard which makes it easy for me to put a lot of things online. But if you can I highly recommend doing as much on the computer as possible. This year I have started with several strategies and so far (its only been a week) they seem to be working effectively and I feel a little less of the "clutter stress". Plus an added bonus is that I feel like the grading is a lot more manageable and I can actually keep up! I had to put in a little up front work for some of these, but again I feel like I'm already seeing the pay off. So here's what I've been doing: 1. Online Warm Ups: I post my warm up questions (very simple, not meant to be hard,just a quick review or something to get students thinking) on blackboard. I have it set so that they don't show up until class starts. Then they go away 8 minutes after class starts. The students have the 8 minutes to complete the warm up then sit in their seats and wait for directions. I post a slide where it tells them what they need to have out for the day. So far this has done wonders for my tardy issues. If the student is late too bad, they don't get the daily 5 points. But at the same time when I have three kids walk in 5 minutes late it doesn't disrupt everything I've just said. It might seem like 8 minutes of wasted class time...but when you think about it it takes 8 minutes to start know matter how you do it. 8 minutes is not that long so the students do have to focus and jump on the warm up right when they come in. It seems to get their focus in the right place and gets the class period off to a good start! 2. I do as many assignments as I can where the students can post to blackboard electronically. Since I don't have my classroom during my plan time, I'm moving around a lot. Being able to access student work online instead of dragging a bag of papers around is so much easier. Added benefits: No sloppy handwriting to try to decipher and the students seem to prefer to type. 3. The only work I have students do by hand are participation type assignments. Except for their science journals. This is still a work in progress but here's what I'm doing so far. I have yet to find an online program to create a science journal that I really like. And I think its important for students to keep a journal in science. I'm doing any notes, lab data, observations, power writing activities, etc. I keep track of the assignments I give and then about once every week to two weeks my goal is to check for completion. I want the students to feel safe to write and observe in their journals. But I also want to ensure that they are doing the tasks I assign. So I'll see how this goes...I've tried the science journal every year and hope this is the year for success! That's all I have for organization. Wish me luck on an organized semester! Happy long weekend! Yay for Labor day!

Final Project at Middle College

Here is a link to the blog my students created about their social change project. There are pics and a few videos about the process. http://letmcsocialchangetheworld.tumblr.com/

3 days left!

Three days until the students are done! Seniors graduated last week so we just have the juniors. Although everyone is ready to be done I am so excited to end on a positive! This year the team of teachers I work with decided to come together to do a big final project. This seems so much more engaging than trying to drag out another week of lessons.

Our students built 5 benches and are painting each bench with a message targeting a social change issue.

Projects are awesome, but can be tiring! But, I really think the learning outcomes and the sense of pride in our community is so worth the effort! Here is the link about our project: http://letmcsocialchangetheworld.tumblr.com/

Overall it's been a good year. I think parts of teaching are getting easier as I gain experience!

Check out the blog above for photos and ideas from our project. I hope this year I have helped my students to feel more connected to their learning and the impact they can have on the world! Happy summer!!!

Spring Break

As spring break week comes to an end once again I am grateful for teacher vacation. It is so easy to get frustrated and negative this time of year. I can't stress enough how important it is for teachers to have time to recharge. It is always after a break that I am able to remember the things I love about teaching! When you're struggling to keep your head above water with grading and just keeping up in general, it is hard to be motivated to plan really engaging fun lessons. But after a break I am able to get excited again! For unit two I had my students do a fold-able in my chemistry class. I wrote about this last semester but I just have to reiterate what a great project it is! I don't know what it is about doing the work in a construction paper booklet...but it makes the students work. I had some student comments that I just couldn't help but share! On the last day I had a student ask me if I needed to keep some to show in the future. Cool that she was so proud that she wants me to showcase hers! I had another student awed by how much work she had done. She held it up and said wow this would be 7 pages in a word document. I think keeping all the work together for one unit is a great way to showcase to the student how much they learned. When its all worksheets I don't think they see/recognize what they have done. On to unit 3: My next unit is on Energy. I have some basic intro energy activities planned. Including a joint math/science activity where the students roll balls down a ramp. Then I will lead into a big project on Ethanol. I found this Ethanol activity in NSTA magazine Science Teacher. The project is a research project on the use of ethanol as a source of fuel. But it culminates with a mock senate hearing. I am going to combine my class with the social studies class. I am hoping for high engagement! It sounds fun to me! But you never know what is going to pique the students interest. We'll see! I will update and post pics as I do the unit! In other news I am heading into cell respiration/fermentation with my biology class. I am thinking I will try to lead into a cool final cell project. Last years cartoon sort of flopped. I have some students who like to rap so I might try to incorporate that into the project. I want to give the students some options but I need to figure out a format to really get good content. Sometimes with a video or a rap you end up with low content. I will have to be specific with a rubric and exactly what information needs to be included. I think if I lay out exactly what I want I will have better results than in the past. My road trip career class is working on their research paper the week we get back. We will then lead into the video and experimental design piece. Just a few weeks and we will be starting the interviews and final project component! Exciting stuff! Yay for being excited again! Time after spring break always flies! Here we go!

Spring Semester...Water, Water, Water!

Spring semester seems off to a good start. It's hard to believe there are only 3 weeks until spring break. The spring semester always flies by. This semester I'm teaching intro/environmental chemistry, a section of biology, and a really cool class called road trip nation. The road trip nation is focused on career exploration. I'm adding an emphasis on STEM careers and doing a experimental design research project.

But I wanted to talk about my water unit in chemistry. It has been really fun! I've done two field trips, one to the local water treatment plant and one was a tour through a local tunneled creek. Lots of engagement. The students created designs for rain harvesting systems and explored the energy put into making plastic water bottles. To top it all off it has become a cross-curricular project. It is so exciting when you do something that all the teachers are into! It really helps to create teacher engagement. And when teachers are excited students are usually engaged and interested as well! So unit 1 was great! I'll post pics of the rain harvesting brochures. Hurray for cross-curricular excitement!