Tales from the science classroom

 Summer is finally here and it is time to start really digging into what worked, what didn't, and what do I want to do next year?  The last time I posted I was looking at the Patterns chemistry curriculum. Since then I've moved to the iHub Chemistry. It is similar in that it has opening phenomenon, tests, quizzes, end of unit projects, etc. It consists of 5 units and they explore chemistry by looking at real world things. The first unit is the search for life. They kind of tie into biology and use that information and chemistry to examine how we could go about looking for life in the cosmos. I think it would be really interesting to the kids. So I'm probably going to go with that. I need to pick one and just go all in and I'm 99% sure it's iHub.  But, and this is a big but, I can't wing it. I need to have everything ready and know what I'm going to be doing every day. Every minute of every day. I technically don't have enough time to cover all 5 units, s...

 I'm just so over school that I can't seem to be bothered. I am done with this group of kids. I'm tired of fighting with parents and students about grades. I'm just done.  I have been looking forward to next year and I do think that I'm going to switch things up some. I'm really looking at the Patterns curriculum for chemistry. It's a modeling type, in that they discover things before we put names to them. But it also seems to be much more fully formed. They have anchor phenomena, end of unit projects, tests, quizzes, etc. It just seems more fully developed then the modeling curriculum. The modeling seems to have been developed a few years ago and then just left. They do have a sequence and an outline but there are a lot of things missing and I'm not sure I want to work that hard anymore. I think it's time to just follow a curriculum and be done with it. Also, with all the things they have in place, it would be much, much easier to use the notebooks....