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!

Done, Done, Done!

Hurray for winter break! Sometimes it's hard to be positive the last few weeks, but now that it's over there's time for some good thoughts. I thought I would take a few minutes to reflect. And then I'm going to forget about school and students for 3 weeks!!
My climate change project was a flop. I was really hoping it would take off, but it seemed to fall flat. I think there was just too much other stuff going on and it was hard to get students interested in anything. Note ton self not to try big projects so close to the end of the semester.
I did do a cool wrap up project in biology. It was just a simple research project on the kingdoms of life. I had a student make an awesome kids book. I will use the structure of a kids book for projects next semester.

I was also really proud of the results on my Earth Science final. The quality of responses was impressive. I feel like in terms of teaching this has been my best semester yet. I like how I am a lot more prepared. As my teaching coach always said: "it's all about the tools in your toolbox!" The more experience I gain, the more I see the rigor of my content increasing and my students are keeping up!

Top 5 things I've learned this year:
1.Cooperative learning when structured properly really works!
2. Structure and routine from day one are the key to a successful semester.
3. Relationship building and team building are essential to learning.
4. We must teach students how to use the Internet properly. Why stop them from finding information! Encourage them, but make sure you're teaching them how to evaluate if the information is accurate!
5. The more you have the students asking questions, and doing the investigating, the more they learn. In my classroom I want the students asking the questions, not me!

I leave you with those thoughts! I'm off until next year!

Teacher Thanks!

Happy Thanksgiving! I'm very thankful for a three day vacation! It is the perfect break to help me make it to the end of the semester! As a teacher I am grateful for the excellent vacation time! It is necessary to recharge every so often so that we're not grouchy or frustrated!

On Monday it's 3 more weeks. Reviewing for the End of course exam in Biology and a final project in Earth Science.

Excited about the final project on climate change. A subject I'm passionate about and hopefully will create engagement. Planning to make it cross-curricular. More on the project later! For now lets enjoy some relaxing time!

The Secret Pocket Foldable!

When I started teaching I had a mentor who taught me a foldable that is AWESOME! I have used this foldable twice this year. Once in biology and once in Earth Science. It has been really fun and the students seem to really enjoy it, get a lot out of it, and their understanding of the content seems to increase. This is a booklet foldable. But the cool part is that there is a secret pocket. The way I have used this is to give the students an assignment for each section of the booklet. The way I have had sucess is that I start off with the cover being very simple and mostly about them decorating and personalizing their foldable. I think this is how you get their interest. Then you increase the rigor of the assignments. You can even do book work for some of the sections and its almost as if the students don't realize they are doing bookwork. I give an assignment and then the next day do an activity to review what was covered. Or you can do the opposite and cover a topic and then for review have them do something in the foldable. In Earth Science the topic was Energy and Resources. The Biology topic I used was Genetics and DNA. For the Earth Science topic in the secret pocket I had the students pick what they think is the best energy source. They had to come up with ten statements from least obvious to most obvious about their source of energy. Then in invisiable ink they wrote their choosen energy source. They were very engaged. The following are some pics of a foldable that had a lot of time and effort put into it.

I act very excited and enthusastic when I introduce the project. It's amazing to me how just letting the student be creative, print in color, and put a personal touch on something, can create engagment and excitment for the students.