Summer!

I was doing so well! And then I went from February until now without a post! Everything always goes so fast the last few months of school! I've had a week off   and will start summer school on Monday. 

I wish I had some sort of inspiration or really cool project to talk about...but at the end of the year I'm always just so ready to be done. Usually during the summer I have time to unwind and get excited/motivated again! 

I have two ideas I plan on thinking about over the summer. First as an intro earth science project I want to have the students build their own jar terrariums. Might be a neat way to talk about systems and get them interested. So that's just a project to keep in the back of my mind.

I also really want to focus on teaching strategies, like cooperative learning for physics 1st. Now that I know the content a little better and what to expect, I think I can make the class flow better. I'll have good practice starting next week. I'm going to need a lot of strategies to keep the summer school kids motivated all day. I'm hoping that using lots of strategies will naturally lead to more efficient classroom management. 

So that's what I'll try to think about over the summer...happy end of the school year. I'll be back in the fall.

DNA Projects

Just had two snow days! Came back thinking things might be chaos, but surprisingly the students were able to finish up the DNA project and present. For the project the students had to either make a model of DNA, draw a blue print, or come up with a museum tour presentation about DNA. Overall it was successful! The tour was the hardest and mostly the students did PowerPoint type presentations and the idea of a tour got lost. But for the model "dream house" and blueprint of a "building" I had some great results. Below are some pictures of the student projects.The pictures show the finished products, however the students also had a written description component and they verbally presented. I liked that this project gave the students the opportunity to really visually see what DNA looks like and what the parts are. I also think that this will help them understand how DNA splits when we get to DNA replication. I was pleased with how this project turned out and with a few revisions, I will definitely do it again next year.

Model 1

Model 1

Blueprint 1

Model 2

 

Blueprint 2

Model 3

Model 4  

January!

I missed December, but I'm back! The end of the semester and then the holidays always are a crazy time of year. 

So far the new semester is off to a good start. I've been really surprised with the physics 1st class. I was nervous to teach it, since physics is not my background. It's been okay! I'm excited to teach it again next year, now that I know a little more of what I'm doing! I think the way the course is set up, will lend well to add in a lot of lit strategies, writing, and cooperative learning. 

In other news, I did my comic lesson back in December. It wasn't awesome...but it also wasn't a failure. The best part was a new technique I tried which I'll count for my January strategy. 

Instead of just explaining the comic, I modeled my thought process on the board. I put up the outline and created a storyline off the top of my head with some input from students. 

This would be a good strategy for any type of writing. When the students see the teacher making mistakes, they might be more willing to make mistakes and they see the importance of making corrections before a final draft. So the strategy to try is modeling writing from your head,  on the board for students to see/hear your thought process.

For the comic lesson, I think next time, I would go ahead and do the whole comic on the board. I found some students took what I did and were able to create a good outline. And then they weren't as successful at taking the outline and turning it into a comic. 

The other part of the comic that I liked was that I did not get any comics that were just boxes with the steps of mitosis. Every comic had at least some creativity.

My next big lesson is a DI lesson. I'm doing a project on DNA where the students have several choices for how they model and explain DNA. I'll let you know next month how it goes!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Pushing it to the last minute! But I made it for my November post!

I'm sitting here on my long break for Thanksgiving, and it's hard to think about school. So this will just be a quick literacy  strategy post. 

Again I don't know the name...It's a pretty simple reading activity and doesn't take much prep. I actually took it from another teacher when I was watching his class for him. So it could be an easy lesson to leave for a substitute. 

I had the students read an article. In this case it was about the history of beer and wine making to introduce fermentation. But you could use anything! The students  read and recorded connections, main ideas, and then wrote summaries. Then I put them in groups of 4. They had a worksheet with 4 boxes. They had to go around and share/write in a box. Each student had to write one comment in each of the boxes. The boxes were, "I wonder...?", "Some connections I made were...", "Wow it's really cool that..." , and "new words with definition". 

It seemed to get the students talking and 

discussing. Just a small strategy to encourage reading in your classroom.

In 2 weeks I'm going to try a comic again. I'm supposed to be filmed doing it. I'm nervous...I've struggled with comics in the past!  But I really want to get it to work. We'll see! Hope for the best!

October!

October is always super busy! But it really is my favorite time of year. The weather has been great! There's been a few days when the weather was changing or the days of the moon eclipse...when the students seemed crazy! But overall I feel pretty good about school. And of course I get caught up on grading then I get behind again. But you can only do so much!

For literacy I've been doing a lot of Cornell Notes and variations of them. So I struggled to come up with a good October strategy to blog about. I decided to write about one I learned in grad school and used during student teaching. If I write about it now, I figure that will motivate me to try it in the next few weeks. 

It's called Annotating the Textbook. I don't use that name with students because if you say annotating they think it's something intense and don't want to try. For this strategy you take a piece of the textbook, (start with a small chunk) and have the students read it and take notes. But the key is how they are taking notes. As they read they have to jot everything they think. It's crucial that you model this for them or they won't get what they should out of it. Their notes should look like a stream of thoughts and questions. They can even draw quick images if that works for them. It doesn't all have to be scientific! The idea is that you are teaching them what good readers do autmatically. One big thing is making connections and visualizing. 

It's similar to when you ask them to make connections, but you don't use the word make connections. They don't even realize they are doing it. 

To make this strategy more understandable/useable I will post my sample/model and then if I get some good student examples I will post them. 

I think I'll try it with a high interest article then the text.

One more just quick idea I wanted to write about is comics. Every year I want to incorporate making comics into my lesson. I tried again and had somewhat of a failure. I had the students do a  comic project. But I ended up with mostly nice study guides and very little creativity. So it wasn't a complete failure because they still had content...but the comic part flopped. I modified a project I did a few years ago and tried to make it less broad. But, I still think I had too much info at a time. 

I'm not going to give up. My next idea is to try to start by giving them a fill in the blank comic so they get some ideas. Try to work them toward creativity. Then start with a short comic about one small topic. So we'll see how that goes!

 But for today the weather is beautiful and it's a weekend so I'm going to enjoy not being at school! Happy  Saturday!

September Stategy

Oh wow! Time management seems to be kicking my butt!! I am struggling to stay focused and keep on top of grading and lessons. Trying to stay one day ahead for lessons...not awesome! 

I spent yesterday during my plan time, rearranging the desks. I decided my management just isn't good enough right now to be able to let the kids face each other. So it's back to facing forward! We'll see if this new seating chart and trying be a little meaner, gets me back on track!

September's Stategy is a vocab structure. It has an official name, I just can't remember it. I call it 4 box vocab!

Box A the students write the official definition. (Teacher given or from textbook)

Box B is the definition in their own words.

Box C is a pic or symbol

Box D is stating what the word is not.

Some tips...

Model first

Only have students do a small number of words. Pick out very important terms or split them up. I would say 4-8 words.

Really go over Box D...model and give good examples and not so good examps to show what you're looking for.

Okay that's my September post! My goal is to get caught up. Stay farther ahead with lessons and catch up grading! It's never ending. Yay for fall coming! 

August Literacy Strategy

Well I missed July. So I'll give two strategies for August and then pick up from here on out! 

The first one is a classic and fairly straightforward but it is a great note taking tool to teach! I've heard it called Cornell notes and also two column notes. All you do is have the students take notes on a reading where they record the main idea in one column and then 3 details/evidence in the other column. I also add a box at the bottom of the page where the students write a brief summary. I think the key with this strategy is to model what you mean by main idea, details, and summary. Also start with a very easy, high interest article. It's easy to assume that students know how to write a summary. But I've found this is often not the case!

My 2nd strategy is more of a writing strategy and also helps with processing. I may have talked about it before but it's a great tool in the classroom and can be used in multiple ways. It's called powerwrite. All that happens is you give the students a topic or a word and time them for 2 minutes. They have to write about the topic for the entire two minutes. They can write in complete sentences, bullet, or draw pictures. As long as they don't stop. I don't ever grade the powerwrites for accuracy. But after each one I have random students share with each other. And then sometimes I have random students share with the whole class. This helps to keep them accountable!

The new school year has started and I'm excited!! Welcome back!!