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.