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!