Tales from the science classroom

 I started break a week ago with intentions of getting the first units of both classes set up. I'm almost there. In the process, I came across some highly recommended books. I got said books and I proceeded to try and speed read them. I wanted to incorporate every idea from all the books in January. Thankfully, I came to my senses. The book on the right, Ambitious Science Teaching, is an awesome book but has tons and tons of information and I'm never going to get through it before school starts. So that book is now being placed on the top of my summer reading list. I will delve deep into that over the summer and incorporate it into my curriculum.  The next book in the stack, Science Formative Assessment, is really  a list of formative assessment strategies to use in the classroom. They have 75. I'm going to go through that and choose maybe 3 or 4 to use this coming semester. Again, over the summer I will have more time to work on incorporating more.  The 3rd book, Un...

 On thing that I never learned in my teacher education program is how to do lesson plans. We had to do them, but weren't given any real guidance just told to do them. Hmmmm..... For 13 years I've struggled with this and I have finally come to the conclusion that I might be overthinking things. The chemistry and biology curriculum that I use comes with a teacher guide and I think I just need to use that as the basis for my units. I do that, but I need to be more organized about it. The notebook folks have included a unit planner and I think I'm gonna use that but just put in the general idea. So for example, when we return to school we will start a unit on substances; mixtures, pure substances, elements, and compounds. I think in the unit planner I will just put the general idea of what I want to do and then use the teacher guide for the details. That seems to make more sense since I default to the teacher guide all the time anyway. So I'm going to use the unit planner a...

 I have a goal to have the first unit for each class complete and ready to go before this break is over. I'd really like to start on the next unit also, but once I get the first unit down, I think that the others will come quicker, once I know what I'm doing. I'm excited to have everything planned out so I know exactly what I'm doing each day. One thing that I really need to do is focus on putting things in the Google Classroom. Yesterday I started new Google Classrooms for all my classes and I organized the topics by weeks. That way if a scholar is absent, they just have to look for the  day they are absent and find what's in there. Plus, I really only have to post 2 times a week. My classes overlap A days and B days, and I try to keep things the same for both days so they don't get out of whack. So maybe on Monday and Wednesday afternoons, I take 10 minutes, make a short video on what we did in class and post it. That should work as long as I am consistent. I ...

 and I got a couple of emails last night inquiring how to bring up grades. 🤦‍♀️I honestly don't remember high school, but I can guess that I didn't care about my grades in high school. Considering I hardly went to class and got asked to leave, I'm pretty sure grades weren't on my radar.  And granted, when I went to college I was considerably older. I guess living on the edge is something high schoolers are trying at this point. Now, from my vast age and experience, I know that living on the edge is a dangerous place to be. But I guess when you are 16-17 it seems okay. All I know is that I am done.  Now I get to switch my focus to next semester. I have a lot of plans for next semester and I just need to set them up so I'm ready to go. The first decision is do I update the syllabus or not? I think that we need a little refresher course in the syllabus and also what is and is not acceptable in class. So I'm thinking that may go in the beginning of the notebook for...

 of this semester. Tomorrow and Thursday I'm taking off as my dog is having surgery. Major surgery and I want to be around for it, just in case.  Yesterday and today I'm giving part 1 of my finals - the written part - and then tomorrow and Thursday the sub will just give the multiple choice part. That way I'll be home grading the written part and the multiple choice part will be super easy to grade. Grades are due by Friday.  I've started working on my plans for next semester, what else is there to do while they are testing?  And I'm really like how it is turning out. I'm diving in, all in, with the Weibert notebooks, and so I'm working on my unit plans to make those work. The unit plans require some time to make sure you have it all in place before starting the units. Also, the modeling curriculum relies sort of heavily on worksheets and I'm going to be adjusting them to work in the notebooks. I'm excited about this. I am also reading that book I po...

 Last night was open house and that is always a long day. I'm truly grateful they hold it on Thursday so we have Friday off, but wow. Last night was also the first time we had it in the Fall semester. We have a lot of housing development in the area and we are trying to fill up our enrollment slots. Let's hope it was worth it.  I did get my finals all copied while I had to stay and wait for the open house. Since I live 30 minutes away, it just didn't seem reasonable to drive home and then drive back. Of course now that I look at it I think next time I will do that. School ends at 3:30 and open house is at 7. That's a large chunk of time. I could drive home and be home by 4:30 (because I can't leave right at 3:30) and leave to come back around 6ish. That's not horrible. And it kind of beats sitting around school for 3.5 hours. Of course, if I come home there is a very real possibility that I won't go back, so that's something to consider.  I did use my ti...

 Yesterday was the dreaded 4A class. I didn't have a lot for them since it was review day. I thought we could review and then watch a video. Well believe it or not they wanted to play Blooket - a review game. And they wanted to play it twice. Unreal. Also, it was the most fun class I've had with them all year. There were a number of people absent and that helped. But some students that I didn't expect actually did their work and were able to participate it class. It was amazing. So I like to say I bring my own weather, well in this case it's really true.  So today is Thursday. One more day of review and then it's all finals. I'm only in Monday and Tuesday. Bella is having surgery on Wednesday so I'm taking Wednesday and Thursday off to be home with her. Plus, Monday and Tuesday are the essay parts of the final, so that will give me two days to get them graded and ready to  enter. Wednesday and Thursday they will have a sub and take the multiple choice part o...

 It is the penultimate week of school. I sent out an email on Saturday that I would no longer be accepting work and if it was turned in there was no guarantee it would be graded. So I have received a boatload of late work. Yesterday I had 5 soccer players in my room wanting me to go ahead and let them play even though they are failing the class. I refused and they were pissed and I don't really care. I hate to see kids so disappointed and I know they really want to play, but they should have considered their grades months ago, not just now because they want to play. One kid literally said he had a game in 20 minutes. Give me a break. Anyway, I'm sticking to my guns and I'm not grading any late work. It says in my syllabus that late work will not be accepted. I'm going to have to be a lot tougher on this next semester. In fact, I'm thinking of doing a syllabus update in January and I may highlight that. I'm not sure yet. But I'm really, really tired of late w...

 Notebooks are something I have struggled with since I started teaching. During my student teaching, my mentor teacher went to a training for interactive notebooks - they were rather new at the time. When she came back we looked at them and discussed them and I fell in love. Even though I hadn't spent much time in a classroom at that point, I could immediately see the benefits to the students. I started doing some research and planned on instituting them as soon as I had my own classroom. Well, I got my own classroom, started with the notebooks and fell flat with them. They just didn't work the way I had envisioned them. That's okay. The following year I started with cut-outs and foldables. That went well for a while and that fell flat too. Every year that I tried to do them, they just didn't work out. I would forget them. Or we would be doing things that weren't in there. Many, many things happened. Eventually I just gave up on them. I always told my students they ...

 I always think there is something better and I try to find it. Sounds strange, but let me explain.  We are nearing the end of the semester. We have 2 weeks left. The last week is given over to finals, so next week will be review. So basically, in my mind at least, I am done. I am already looking towards next semester and how I can make things better. I have ordered the notebooks that I want and they arrive today. I've been working on my planner/tracking journal to come up with a plan that works for next semester. In my mind I've moved on. I can't let that happen. I have lots to do to wrap up this semester. I need to write the final exams for both classes. I need to make study guides for those exams. I need to make review games. I have a lot to do and only 3 days to do it. I also have to get caught up on the grading so that is not hanging over my head. So I can't focus on next semester yet. I need to stay focused and finish this semester strong.  On another note, my lit...