Brain Dump

I had wanted to try to blog on an almost daily basis about what I was doing with students in my classroom this year but that is pie-in-the-sky. Here are things from recently that I liked or want to remember for next year.

• 8th graders are far less willing to be silly/risk-take than 6th graders (have we beat it out of them?)
• Sitting on the desks to do an otherwise normal activity brought novelty that was good.
• Having difficulty getting kids to talk (particularly 1st thing in the morning)
• Reminded again & again how important relationships are to the work we do with kids.
• Need to have more defined roles when going outside for speed sapiens lab
• Using hand-signs for speed, velocity & acceleration worked well as a total participation technique.
  
• Haven't incorporated claps as form of recognition and reinforcement as much as would have liked.
• The egg demo & plate pull was effective as demos for inertia, liked also using the inertia hat as an engage.
• I think the spaghetti activity from the beginning of the year wasn't as effective as I hoped it would be. I'm curious what the other 8th grade teachers thought. Kids didn't want to try it. Wonder if kids thought we were breaking the rules of the 1st couple of day by asking more of them than just sitting & listening.
• Demo of walking while holding timers that I saw another teacher use was a good way to help kids understand, short time=fast speed & longer time=slower speed

Summary Week 1

This week our 8th grade teachers (myself included) tried hard to channel our inner Dave Burgess (via Teach Like a Pirate). We started our first day in class by having kids create models (tying a little to a science concept) using playdough. In retrospect, it was hard to get this done well in the shortened amount of class time that we had due to our revised beginning week bell schedule. I tried to take a picture of each kids creation but honestly didn't get them all.  It would have been ideal if we could have kept the each of the creations however, we had to reuse the playdough.  I made 6 batches of of playdough (http://theimaginationtree.com/2012/04/best-ever-no-cook-play-dough-recipe.html). We have about 350 8th graders so I don't know if it would have been feasible for us to not reuse the playdough. (You can see my first day post to see a couple more pictures of what kids created.

  


Our 2nd day of class was having students work in a group to create structures using 20 pieces of spaghetti and about 60 cm of tape to try and create the tallest structure possible. I thought this was going to be more of a hit than I think it was. Some of the groups didn't want to try to build anything or seemed to not have any ideas about how to go about this. Some of this is could be due to my explanation/selling of this activity. I did wonder if part of the roughness was because we weren't following the first day "rules". Some of our 8th graders seem jaded towards school (how sad..), they have been through this drill before and know that the 1st couple of days not much is expected of them except to be compliant and listen. When we bucked the trend and asked them to do something very different they didn't know how to respond.

Day 3 and 4 was a little more traditional, I did a mapping activity where students had to find the safety equipment and classroom materials. Upon reflection, maybe I could have done this as a treasure hunt with clues and a map. I would have to really think about how you could make this work successfully without having established the classroom procedures that I usually use for materials management, behavior expectations etc. Friday we put together our interactive notebooks.

On Thurs, 6th graders did a penny lab where they were asked to count the number of water drops that could be placed on a penny. Teachers at this grade level were waited a little longer to have a hands-on activity. Two out of three are new to teaching science and I think are very concerned about the differences between science and their previous content areas.

On Thurs and Fri, 7th graders completed the helicopter lab that gave a brief introduction to independent & dependent variable.

Words to Describe Us!

I asked students to give a word that describes themselves (though some gave a sentence). Here is what they think:

First Day!

Today was my first day with students. We had students on campus yesterday but students were in advisory all day long.  We took a page from Dave Burgess & used play dough to have students build something that represented them. I found that my 2nd period was much more willing to embrace the idea of creative fun. I don't actually know if this was due to a better explanation on my part or if the mix of kids were more willing to take a risk.  I did find that many kids didn't want to take a picture with their creation.  I had originally planned to let kids take the pictures themselves (with their own device or with the school iPad) & then email them to me. However, we had shortened classes due to advisory and this didn't work out.  I took some pictures with my phone. I wish I had managed to get more.  These will be super helpful in learning names.  I have already reviewed the names of the kids I have in pictures several times tonight and I think this will help me learn the names faster.

I'm also sharing my classroom with a colleague and this will take some getting used to (on both our parts I am sure).  I am going to have to get used to not being able to work on projects in my room and having to move in and out of their several times a day.  I will say, I'm glad that he will be able to stay in the same room for all of the science classes that he teaches.

Something new!

Two weeks or so ago, I got the opportunity to moderate the science Teach Like a Pirate chat (#scitlap). A teacher colleague, Andrea Kornowski, from Wisconsin stepped in to help me to finalize the questions and help keep things moving. On two other occasions, I have helped with the chat by welcoming people and helping to keep the flow of conversation going. However this was the first time that I had developed the questions.  The topic and appropriate questions are the hardest part of agreeing to moderate.  I was able to think of several possible topics that I discarded because I decided that they were too narrow in scope or weren't appropriate for an international, multi-grade conversation.

I was pleased with how nicely the chat went though the first minute or two when no one chimed in to the introduction, I was sweating bullets.  If you are interested, offer to moderate or to help. It's a fun way to grow beyond you own classroom or district.

On a side note, if you haven't read Andrea Kornowski's blog or follow her on Twitter you should, I just clicked over there to make sure I spelled her name correctly and I found two excellent ideas that I am planning on borrowing from her in just a couple of weeks. Her Twitter handle is @andreakornowski.

Workshop Reflections

I recently had the opportunity to teach an all-day district wide professional development for primarily science teachers.  The feedback was great and I enjoyed the opportunity to share with my peers. A few thoughts on what I might want to change for next time.

I selected Hooks, Games & Technology: Techniques to draw them in as the title of my workshop.  I wanted to offer a variety of things that I had used or found for classroom use. I thought a variety of things would make it more likely that a teacher would find something that he/she could use in their classroom. However, I think I had too much stuff to present.  I should have finalized my content earlier and then just spent my prep time uploading my documents, building the models etc.  In my opinion, we rushed through some of the material to make sure we had time to try all the games, build the models and classroom games.

The past several summers I have done workshops on different topics (literacy, investigations etc) but have always had a co-presenter.  This workshop was shorter, so I was the only presenter.  I felt very comfortable presenting solo but I think having a colleague to work with would be good to share ideas with and to help give feedback on what teachers would find beneficial.

I also had a greater diversity of teachers than I had really planned for (elementary and other content areas).  I tried hard to adapt the games and activities so these could translate to their classrooms.  They all seemed to think it was a good use of their time but I might put more limitations on who can sign up next time. Though honestly, we probably all benefit from the cross-pollination of ideas.

I love being in the classroom with kids but presenting to teachers stretches a different part of your brain.

Changes

Cohesiveness has been one of the strengths of my department. We are small, we have been on the same page about student success and we enjoy working together. It is a recipe that has made for positive student outcomes and a fun place to work. This upcoming year we are having several staff changes at 6th and 8th grade. I'm sad to see my colleagues move on to new positions and challenges but know that they will excel in their new responsibilities. My challenge is how to welcome our new members but maintain the close working relationship that our department has had in he past. We have seven teachers and our staff changes include 3 people so the amount of change is significant.

I need to focus on how my role of coach needs to change to support these teachers who are newer to the profession and new to the discipline. I'm excited to have fresh ideas but also concerned that we will experience growing (changing) pains.  I realize that some difficulties are inevitable but I'd like to do what I can to make this transition as smooth as possible. Any thoughts from those who have been in similar situations?