Next move?????

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 One of the things that I do with school planning that absolutely drives me crazy is switch things up. I will be going along, things will be going okay, and suddenly I will find something and boom, I'll switch my whole curriculum up. I hate that because I want to find one thing and stick with it so that I can get good at delivering it. The greatest teachers have a curriculum that they follow and they just switch little things to keep things new. 

Having said that, I started using the modeling curriculum for biology because I do really like the chemistry curriculum. The problem is that I haven't taken the biology course and I'm having trouble making it cohesive for the students. I'm not a fan of the way things are done, the activities included or the order things are done in. For example, we are in the 2nd unit and have touched on things that haven't been explained yet. So they are having to take things on face value rather than understanding them. Not how I think the modeling curriculum should go and I've been a little frustrated with it. 

About a week ago, I stumbled across the biology storylines curriculum developed by the state of Illinois. They look pretty good. There is also a Facebook group and I've been reading through the posts and examining the storylines. It looks really intriguing. It is what I had hoped the modeling curriculum would be. It appears to be really student focused and allows them to kind of discover a lot of the concepts themselves - with some guidance from me. 

So I'm thinking of switching. We are two units in and I'm just not really pleased. I could just start the storylines and see how it goes. The problem here is that I have to commit to it. The way the storylines are constructed, lots of skills and information are woven through the story. So they won't be learning say genetics all at once but will be discovering it as they examine lions and elephants. I can see how I could easily switch at this point, but I'm not sure that I could switch back. So if I am going to commit I'm have to go all in. 

We have 2 weeks before fall break. Next week we have a test. I'm thinking of having them do a project the following week and then when we come back from fall break picking up the learning. This would give me time to really thoroughly review the storylines and decide if I want to switch. Okay, that's what I need to do. I need to really completely work through the first storyline for myself and see how it looks. I need to understand it before I try to teach it. That is part of the problem with the modeling, I did not go through it as thoroughly as I should have over the summer. I should have worked it like the students would and really get an understanding of it. So that's what I'm going to do with the storylines. I'm going to work through them and make sure I get it so that I can teach it. Maybe I'll keep a notebook of everything so that I have the details. Oh yeah, this is what I need to do. 

All right, now I need to give the dogs their pills, take a shower, and head to the gym. 

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