It's that time again...

-

 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, so I will need to plan things down to the second and stick with the plan. Really stick with the plan. The good news is that the lessons follow a pattern and once I get the pattern established I should be good, but I need to really work to get that pattern set up. 

I want to do the notebooks again, but I think I'm going to alter them just a bit. Usually there is an anchor phenomenon, 4 big ideas for the unit, and a summative task. I'm good with the anchor phenomenon, but the 4 big ideas is something I really struggled with. Not only creating them but remembering to whiteboard them. So I may throw those out, at least for now. Of course, every lesson comes with a question that the lesson should answer. Maybe I can go through the questions and see if I can lump them into 4 categories. Those would then be the 4 big ideas and I could put them in the slides so that I don't forget them. Hmm....that might work. 

I've already started putting things together. We shall see how it all plays out. 

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