Tales from the science classroom

 This chapter I love because I'm always looking for new and different ways to arrange my classroom. And honestly I've gotten stuck in a rut the past few years and it's rather boring truthfully.  He suggests:  Defronting the classroom - that means that the desks don't all face the same way. So there really is no 'front' to the classroom.  Cluster the desks away from the vertical surfaces that the kids will be working on. This allows them room to move and the lure of chair is farther away.  Make the tables and chairs all point in different directions. This way again, there is no 'front' of the room.  Move around the room. Don't stand at what used to be considered the front. Move and make the whole room the workspace.  I love these suggestions on so many levels. I love that there is no front. The kids should be working with each other, not staring at me. There will be times when they will stare at me, but I'm hoping to get away from talking behind t...

 This one I'm kind of excited about while at the same time trying to figure the logistics of it. I love having the kids work together in groups on a large whiteboard. They work on problems, work on answers, work on all kinds of things. In fact, I have had kids ask if they could use the whiteboards when we aren't using them to help them work on things. I love it. Well, this chapter goes a step further. This chapter says that kids should be working on whiteboards but that they should be vertical so the kids have to stand. 🤯 What a great idea. Having the kids up and moving and working. I absolutely love it. He adds a couple of other things to this idea that I love also:  only one marker per group the marker has to move around within the group sometimes the person with the marker can only write what others are saying, NOT what they are thinking have groups in closes proximity to each other so they can see what others are doing they are not allowed to erase someone else's work ...

 I know, but those two posts on the thinking classrooms don't count. That was me thinking through the material and figuring out what would work for me.  This however, is different. This post is on the fact that it looks like I have a biology class next year. Now, I'm not adverse to teaching biology. I'm really not. I like biology. Hell, it's what my degree is in. But that means I will have 3 preps: 4 chemistry classes, 1 AP biology, 1 biology. Considering that I was reworking chemistry and AP biology, this adds a whole other dimension to my year.  I guess it's better to know now so I have time to prepare, rather than not know until we return. Okay, so I'm teaching biology. That leaves me with what curriculum should I use? I will be using iHub for chemistry. Should I use iHub for biology? Should I use the Illinois storylines? I could use Patterns. There are so many and I just need to pick on and stick with it, much like I did with chemistry. I'm leaning towar...

 This chapter deals with forming collaborative groups to work in. Now I know that this is important, but I also know that I've struggled with this over the years. The perfect group size is 3. I learned that in the modeling course and he reiterates it in this book. 3 is the magic number. In groups of 4 someone can lay back and not do anything. In groups of 2 someone usually takes control. Groups of 3 are the perfect size for collaboration. So I will try for groups of 3 - it is not always possible.  He also says that the randomization should be completely transparent to the students. One suggestion he makes is a deck of cards. As the students enter the room, they take a card from you. The groups will form based on the card they drew. So all the 3s will be one group, all the kings will be one group, etc. I like this idea and even have a bunch of decks of playing cards I can use. However, there are a couple of problems.  First problem: I need to have the cards match the numbe...

 This chapter talks about beginning the lesson (the first 5 minutes) with a thinking task.  Basically this amounts to bellwork and something that I am not good at. I have not done bellwork in a few years. But I had been thinking about how to incorporate it next year, so this is right in line with what I was thinking.  He stresses that this should be a non-curricular task. I'm thinking a logic type problem. Initially I will just use any logic type problems but gradually I will incorporate more science/chemistry into the problems.  So I need to gather a lot of these and align them with the lessons. I'm wondering a little if some of the things in the iHub curriculum could be used as these. I was thinking the phenomenon but now that I consider it more, I don't think that would work because most of them have no 'solution' per se.  So back to my thoughts, I need to gather a number of non-curricular thinking tasks that I can use for my bellwork.  I know this all c...

 We are leaving on vacation on Friday and honestly I haven't done much of anything regarding school work. I figure that I will do that when I return. Though I have been reading. I bought this book before the school year ended and knew that I would not get to it until summer:  It was recommended in the modeling group I am in. They were actually doing a book study and I wanted to get in on that but by the time I did they were 10 chapters in and it was the end of the year, so that didn't work as I had hoped.  But I did start reading it a couple of weeks ago and it is kind of awesome. Many of the things he recommends are very similar to what we do in modeling. Things that I have been using that I know work. So that is good. This has given me some ideas on how to tweak my strategies and it has given me some completely new ideas to try. So I'm a bit excited about getting my class set up using some of these strategies.  I think that I may work on this a little bit today sin...

 because of other things going on in life, but I have made some.  I started setting up the notebook for the iHub curriculum. As I was reading my last post, I had an idea of how to incorporate the question for each lesson into the anchor phenomenon so they will have the information to answer the driving question for that unit. What if, we did the first page of the anchor with the I notice, I wonder, and first impressions. Then the top of the second page could be to keep track of the things we learn and the bottom half is where they answer the driving question at the end of the unit. That would eliminate the 4 big ideas because sometimes you just can't boil things down into 4 big ideas. I'm liking that. It's kind of like combining the summary table and the big ideas all into the anchor phenomenon. Cool, I'll work on that.   I also need to work on the templates for the worksheets. I don't want them just answering worksheets, I want them writing in their notebooks and r...