Geodes!

For my Earth Science final project I had my students make their own geodes. They had to research and come up with a method of making geodes. They worked in groups of three and they had to have 3 geodes to display at the end. One was supposed to have the smallest crystals, one with the biggest crystals, and one was supposed to be the most natural looking. Here are some of their results. Turned into a very cool project. It took some of the students a lot of experimenting to get what they wanted. How often do students really get to "play"? Usually we just give them a set experiment and they have to follow it exactly. This was an awesome way for them to explore and figure out what worked and what didn't work. 

Idea!!

I am supposed to be grading....but I just had what I think is an awesome idea. If I don't write it down now I will forget it. So I'll put it in here, hopefully this summer I can the details ironed out and then one of my first posts in the fall can be showing some cool results! We'll see!

I found a PBL from Buck Institute (BIE) for a life science project on ecosystems.  The project is set for 7th grade. But after looking at it I think I could turn it into a starting earth science project and make it higher level/more rigorous and add content. I also had a few changes to make it my own.

The original project from Buck Institute uses the driving question "How can we design a completely self-sustaining ecosystem?" The project is for students to act as "set designers" for a TV reality show who need to propose a working ecosystem for an artificial biosphere. You can find the official project in the book, "PBL starter Kit" from the Buck Institute for Education. You can also go to BIE,org and create an account to have access to PBL information and other projects.


My idea is to keep the same concept but have the final project be a movie poster or show advertisement in the form of murals. Each group would do a different ecosystem and paint the murals around my classroom.

So that is my idea in a nutshell. Its just a brain storm now. But I'll let you know as I come up with more ideas and figure out more of where I'm going with it.

Time to try again!

Well...I did good for a while...but myself slip and I stopped updating. I'm back and motivated to try again.  I wasn't sure where to start up again since its been so long. I doubt any one is interested in a long drawn out saga about everything I've done this year.  Instead I'll just give you a few highlights and successes, a few ways I want to improve, and some ideas for next year.

The big push in my district this year has been of course technology, but also something called Project Based Learning. Some teachers are balking at this...and the big question is how can we still hit the content with projects and ensure the students learn the required material?  For me, I think it will be challenging but I am excited! PBL fits my teaching style and I think I can blend the lecture/content within the projects. At least that's my goal!   I tried one PBL unit in Earth Science this year and I think that although it was not exactly as cool as I thought it would be, I learned a lot about what not to do when setting up my project. All PBL's center on an essential question. For this one, my big question was "To what extent do humans own natural resources?" The students picked an issue to look at and examined the question through their group's issue. For example I had a group look at deforestation. They investigated how the ways in which humans use trees for economic gain and the impacts this has. Another group focused on the use of plastic and the effects. The students created videos that included written text, interviews, video clips, etc. My biggest success was that student engagement was awesome! Every day almost all students were working and focused during class. The students did the research and I think they had good information....the part that didn't go so well was the transition of the research and knowledge they gained to the video. The content of the actual videos themselves was low. The students could talk to me about the issue and had some great insight into the essential question but the video's didn't showcase that knowledge. Part of a good PBL is the publishing component. Originally I wanted the students to have a product that they would show to others outside of the classroom. This part got pushed to the side toward the end. I think if I had focused on the public presentation they may have been more focused on getting the content into the videos.

Other positives from the year are just that I think I am continually gaining more and more activities for my "toolbox". I can take any content and then in my head I can go through different strategies and its easy for me to pull out a strategy that I think will fit for the activity. I think my big goal for next year and this seems big but I'm going to try to do it in baby steps. I tend to try to jump all in so I plan to slow down and do one thing at a time. That said...my goal is to come up with an essential question and a project for all my units. And then embed all my strategies into the unit so that the students are still getting content. For example, the students seem to really seem to do well with foldable activities where they take notes in some sort of foldable and keep everything today. So maybe I can still do that...but online...and then they use that as a journal for their project. This is all very preliminary and I'm just getting my ideas together. As I finish up the year I need something to get excited about,,.so this is me brainstorming to get myself motivated. I still want to keep a heavy focus on literacy and do a lot of reading and writing. Not sure what that will look like but I'll update as I figure it out!

This entry has turned into a ramble and I'm not sure that I made any concrete points! So I'll leave it here with the idea that I will add and post as I figure out more firm plans to incorporate project based learning and technology into my classroom next year!

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!