A catch up post, Week 10, Fall Break, Week 11

-

 Since I haven't posted in a couple of weeks, time for a catch up. 


Week 10: 

This was the week before break and we were all done. Completely. Totally. Done. 

Chemistry: 

Week 10: 

Started dimensional analysis (maybe that is why I was so done - teaching this is far harder than it should be). Did a little work on dimensional analysis. Then, on Wednesday/Thursday, I gave them a catch up day. They could work on their summative task, retake any thing they did poorly on, whatever. I did not feel like jumping into something on the day before break. I honestly didn't feel like working on the day before break. 

Over the fall break, I watched a webinar about mathematical reasoning. It really struck home because I realized that these kids had no concept of numbers or what they mean exactly or even really how to use them well. They know the algorithms but they don't really understand what they are doing. So over the break I created a lecture and some notes for them on this topic. I then laid out how they were to do things from now on and then made a worksheet for them to do to practice. 

Week 11: 

Monday/Tuesday: We went over the mathematical reasoning lecture and they worked on the worksheet. It was due the next class for a grade. 

Wednesday/Thursday: We began unit 2. I did the perfume demo and the food dye in hot and cold water demo. It was kind of a draggy, low energy day, that required a lot of thinking and processing from them. Some of the classes got it and some not so much. 

On Wednesday I blew at my 4A class. They are a very talky class to begin with and Wednesday they were particularly talky. I ended up just blowing. I kind of felt a little bad afterwards, but not really. I'm just kind of tired of the nonsense and the BS that goes on. It is getting to the point in the year where we are just worn down. So Monday, this class gets a new seating chart with all the talky people over on one side of the room and everyone else in front of me where we can learn. 

Okay, next week we start diving into gases and the gas laws. This should be interesting. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Going in too many directions????

-
Image
I'm having trouble organizing my lessons. There are a number of technology things that go with my lessons. I am trying to use Planbookplus to create my lesson plans: Which is great but has its limitations. So I thought I would keep all of my files in One Note so I could have access anywhere. That will be good but it is almost like creating lesson plans all over again. Then I have a class blog where things need to be uploaded and offered to the kids. As a result of trying all three of these things, I have completed nothing. All of them are half done and we have just completed the 2nd full week of school. I tried an external hard drive and thought that would be a good way to do it. It has proven to be more of a nightmare than a help. Ugggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!! What to do???? How do I organize all the electronic information I have???? How do I keep track of things and not make myself crazy??????? So that is my struggle this weekend. I am going to complete one or tw...
Read more

And so it begins.........

-
Image
We teachers returned to school on July 24th and the students returned on August 2nd. That means we had the kids 2 days last week, Wednesday and Thursday. And it went well. This year I had to revamp my classroom management system and I think I have something that will work for me. Let me explain; My first 7 years of teaching was at private schools. Even though these private schools were at the lower financial end of the spectrum and most of our students were on financial aid, they were nevertheless private school students. Classroom management was not a huge priority as these students did their work and listened and were respectful and all that stuff. So my classroom management was a little lax because it didn't need to be really strict and tough. Well, now I'm at a public school. And in spite of the fact that this is a charter school and parents have to go out of their way to send their students here, it is still a public school. Last year I handled my classroom management l...
Read more

A stroke of genius?????

-
Image
The ongoing theme of this blog has been organization. I've been teaching for 9 years, but I haven't found a way to organize my stuff that works really, really well for me. Every single year, I struggle finding things I know I have or recreating the wheel because I've forgotten I have something. So I've been working really, really hard to get organized once and for all with a system that works for me. I know that I need to have things written/printed and at my fingertips in order to make good use of them. If I have to go online and look it up it won't happen. I've played around with binders and didn't really use them after I set them up. The last 2 years I did find great success with planners. I would divide the day up into my classes - 4 each day - and jot notes on what was to happen that day. That worked great!! As long as I planned ahead. Too many days I would get to school and the planner was blank. That left me scrambling to figure out what I'm t...
Read more