So it’s the end of week three or really since it’s Sunday already, it’s the beginning of week 4. The best laid plans of blogging teachers is to blog about our class every week. I had read the statistics and funny memes about teaching and blogging. I even knew my own tendencies to over commit myself to projects.
What is most ironic and funny to me is that during my morning walks on the treadmill (which have also slowed to a crawl since school started), I was reading Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. He talks specifically regarding how the mind works and why so many persist in the face of bad statistics and inevitable failure is we think – well, let’s be honest – we think the rules don’t apply to us. “All those others fail, but in spite of statistics, I will persevere.” It’s what keeps us going – the indomitable human spirit.
So I am here at the beginning of week 4 for a quick reflection on weeks 2 and 3. In the immortal words of Monty Python, “I’m not dead yet!” 🙂
Week Two
We open on this scene. The students just seemed bored. I resorted to tactics I had promised to never use – a little cajoling and pushing. “What is going on?” I wondered. I gave out lots of Class Dojo points for participating and gave some harsh warnings to students not listening. Where are the students and classes from last week that were eager and excited for Science because of all the fun?
Oh well, we marched through the lesson. Unit 1: Introduction to Science – students will understand and apply the processes, methods, and tools that scientists use. Students will think like scientists! I had tweaked our district’s lesson on how scientists get understanding to create more space for students to explore the lesson. I felt that as it was it was teacher led instead of student inquiry driven.
I began with the question How do Scientists Get understanding? Then students read a one page story on a scientist while trying to see how the Scientist came to their understandings. Then we briefly discussed what they found out and I connected what they said to six posters around the room. I used this PowerPoint, but not on the screen. I printed the six ways and taped it to big sticky notes around the room.
Students then traveled with their partner or table (as table groups all had the same article) and discussed if they saw evidence in their article for that particular strategy. They then wrote the scientist’s name and the evidence from the article and stuck their little sticky to the big sticky. As a wrap-up, students were to go back to each poster, write down the strategy and quickly jot down one example. Then we wrote answers to the question “Is there anything the same about your science investigations and those of the scientists you looked at today?”
It was messy and a bit confusing and I wonder if I shouldn’t have stuck to the original plan. The posters are still up around the room and each day we have gone back and focused in on one strategy. Detailed Observations we went outside and practiced on a plant – creating charts and tables, using rulers and magnifying glasses. For a lesson on collaboration we did the cup challenge. It helps when the teacher fully understands the challenge, but they still had fun. (We spent most of the day talking our upcoming camp – three days in the “wilderness”).
The best part of the week was Tuesday when our talented and gifted students left and we focused on the words of science. As one of the talented and gifted students was leaving and realizing he was going to miss Science, he cried out in dismay, “Nooo! I’ve been looking forward to Science all day and now I’m going to miss it!” So something was going right!
At the end of week one, I had reflected that my one remorse was not building better rapport or just feeling like I had spent so much time on my perfect plans and had failed to build connections. Sometime during week two, I came across an article on Twitter. The article discusses why students are disengaged. The top reason was that there was no rapport between students and teacher which is often most true at the beginning of the school year. Ding Ding Ding! Halfway through the week, I stopped blaming the students and looked inward. I also realized we all needed more time to just get to know each other. You cannot force rapport. I remembered to just be my upbeat, silly self and began to see a change in engagement.
End of week two, we again saved Friday for our hero project.
Week 3
Labor day made week three a nice short week. Tuesday without our talented and gifted students, we created word sorts of our newly learned vocabulary and utilized Discovery Education‘s Science Techbook to preview our unit on Matter. Wednesday was our turn for a library lesson. So half of class was spent in the library learning about taking notes while researching and the other half was on safety during Science Experiments.
Thursday morning was the first time I had a substitute. I was at school working on camp preparations. My substitute taught students how to make a scientific explanation – claim + evidence + logical reasoning equals scientific explanation. I came back to a very excited and engaged classroom toward the end of second period. Third period went I hope just as well as first and second. It was a fun lesson including a Sesame Street video with Bert and Ernie. You can see the lesson here.
Friday was again dedicated to our Hero Project. Students had the entire class to prepare their presentations which we’ll present next Friday. I utilized them working diligently to call each student up one at a time to make sure they knew how to log into our Google Classroom for their first assignment.
My Favorite Tools
Google Classroom is one of my newest favorite tools. It has been an uphill battle making sure students understand how to use it. I began with one easy assignment that isn’t due until September 25th. Even though as I said above, I showed each student individually how to log into Google Classroom, I still decided to create a screen capture video. I wanted to make sure parents could help their students get logged in. This helped immensely! Ten students have already completed the assignment which included watching a video, adding pictures to Padlet, and completing a pre-assessment on Matter.
Screen capture applications are my other favorite tools! I’ve created several to help show the staff at my school how to access google drive and how to add Twitter feed to our websites. I’ll be absent for two days in a row in October and November for teacher trainings. I plan to utilize screen capture technology to help my substitute access any of the videos / technology she’ll need for those days.
I look forward to reporting at the end of Week 4 on the wrap-up to our Introduction to Science Unit on our Hero Presentations! Thank you for reading and have a great week!