Setting up remind and other 21st century communication

For this week we had parent conferences. During these parent conferences, I have been trying out a couple new forms of communication.

1: Remind
This service was recommended by my BTSA program. It sends text message or email reminders to everyone who signs up. I plan on using this service to remind students and parents when there are upcoming exams or projects due. I have had a lot of parents sign up, so maybe this will help.

2: Snapchat and Instagram
I am going to post a picture of daily agendas to these. I am fairly familiar with both services, so it is not so much a problem of using it. I hope by seeing their homework in apps which they use frequently, the students will be more likely to finish it or other class work that they have not finished. I don't love how snapchat goes away after 10 seconds, but that might be all the reminder that they need to do their work.

I haven't been keeping up on the daily blogging

A snapshot from this week:

Yesterday we did a lab with beans from the Windows on the wild book. I had 2 trays, full of pinto beans. Each tray was labeled renewable or non-renewable resources. Then the students used spoons to scoop the beans into cups. It went well in all of my classes expect for period 2. It is hard not to hold bias from one class on to the rest. Lucky period 3 is just such a good class overall.

Today we went over water as a resource and I tied the two concepts together. The rest of the week they have to work on their project in class. Yay, no more lesson planning this week. And I don't need another plan until next Thursday!

PBL challenges

Independent work is a struggle. I tried varied levels of scaffolding today, but the "we do" was still not enough for them to transfer how to write a bibliography on their own for the "you do." I guess I should add an "I do" into there as well.

So basically I started by asking them how to check to see if a website was reliable. I found some students didn't know the word reliable. But we cleared that up by saying true. Next, we did a google search for someone's invasive species as a class. And then I did the bibliography on the board for that species, having them feed me the information needed (title, author name, website). Finally, I told them the parameters for research (computer rotation, work with your partners, you can use your device) and let them go. Period 4 made me proud today, they finished completely. As expected, periods 1 and 5 maybe 2 pairs of students finished, and there was an intermediate amount in periods 2, 3, and 8. I expected there to be more than 8 though, because I set it up pretty darn well by that point. We will see what kind of success I have tomorrow when I check their homework. I have no idea what tomorrows lesson will be about, I am just staring at various materials, my standards, and the month-long plan. I guess I should do some long term planning for the next 2 weeks so I don't get caught like this again. I got lazy the last couple weeks. I should go back to doing every Thursday like I did during student teaching.

Yesterday I set up the PBL and gave them time to read one of the provided articles.

Using the same lessons as my student teaching

So I am using a lot of the same lessons from my student teaching, but I have been tweaking them. Today I was lazy, so I showed the video about various invasive species. The difference is, today I stopped the video after each question was sufficiently answered by the video. This way the students had a few minutes to process the information and put it down on their paper.

The students came up with a solution for all of the journals getting mixed up, they would color part of the cover so that the classes could not get mixed up! So inventive.

I also found out there is no technology for the students to do research with like I had hoped next week. So I will have to print out materials for the students to "do research" with and just have various stations. I want to do a food web activity tomorrow, but it doesn't look like I will have the string to do it. Too bad.

Lecturing

We all have those days, the days that we simply have to do a lecture. And for me it was today, because I was not prepared to do an activity. I printed up the notes for the students, and set up my projector, and was off and running. My first period is always so hesitant to talk as always. I tried to include a lot of examples as well as opportunity to come up with their own examples for each vocabulary word. But I can tell I had low engagement (down to probably 4/30 kids at some points). I want to finish this tomorrow so we can move on and do another activity.

In one period I had a good argumentation session around if shells are living or not. And in most classes they are comfortable with the think pair share. I want to tie in the PBL every Friday.

Expert Jigsaw Round 1

So yesterday and today I set up an expert jigsaw for the students to do. Oh man, was this painful. And this is a technique I have used countless times in the past. So the only class that was able to do it well was period 2, and period 8 was able to do it at a satisfactory rate. The rest of the classes were just a no-go on the reading. I think that I need to start next week off strong with another activity. I am thinking of doing the food chain one. That will really play into the NGSS. Then after that I will give the first mini assessment, the one that I saw in the science scope from last week's article reading session. So  next we are going to go over native species again, and then go into endangered species. I really need to plan better.

Day 1 Biodiversity

I am all over the place and really should have planned out a unit rather than isolated lessons. Yesterday's lesson was distinguishing between native and non-native species and introducing the students to the unit. However, not all of the students were able to even to figure out on their own what a species was. I ended up giving them a "do now," having them define what a native species was, watch the invasive species cane toad video, and then define what a non-native species was. Finally they did a quickwrite on their own (in some classes where there was time) differentiating a native from a non-native species. I feel like there was a sufficient amount of group work as well as individual work in this lesson. However, I am not sure how beneficial (however successful) this lesson was overall because it was too stand-alone and out of context. I really need to plan the unit.