Etch 'n Sketch Reflections

That's what this has been. It seemed like two weeks in one. I can't even remember Monday! Sometimes you have weeks like that--where everything just seems to be happening all at once from all directions. Nightly prepping for the following day...check. Getting ready for my first middle school conferences...check. Catching up on grading before conferences...almost check (at least I now know from my conferences that I wasn't the only one putting more than a few grades in the online grade book this week). Working through some stuff at home...also almost check. All these things can lead to some hefty stress and make for a long week. Luckily (for the most part), the kids were pretty good. So, based on all that, I've decided to give myself a partial night off from the blog. I still got my weekly post in--it just doesn't have all the details as it usually would, and I'm okay with that for this week. I won't make a habit of it, though. Mindfulness thought for the w...

Slight teacher joke there...the students are working on earth science concepts :-)  Overall it was a pretty good week other than a bump in the road on Tuesday morning due to a student behavior issue, but with some reflecting and a little one-on-one time, we were able to work through it! It was a tiring week, but that may have had something to do with the Packers and Brewers having a few night games... The 7th grade students are learning about changes to the earth's surface, so we have been looking into current events that cause changes to the earth's surface, such as flooding from hurricanes. We then connected those discussions into weathering and erosion and the small and large scale changes that can happen over time. We finished out the week (there is inservice tomorrow, so just a 4-day week!) with the start of a jigsaw activity, where the students are working in teams to take notes on particular results of weathering and erosion, and next week they will present to their cl...

We had a lot of movement in the science lab this week, and I definitely got my daily step allotment in! My seventh grade students were conducting student choice labs, so in order to help the labs run smoothly they were spread out across the area outside of my classroom. There was a lot of movement between the groups since most of the students were conducting labs in which they were having classmates participate in the lab (mostly through taste-testing to see how much sight and smell had an effect on taste). This led me to putting in a lot of steps between groups, checking in on their progress and results (and possibly participating in a few of the labs as well)! The eighth grade classes were moving a lot as well, but that was more due to the lessons I was doing with them. The students have been learning about the rock cycle this week, and we have a quiz tomorrow. One of my lessons was a review of the science notes they have been taking to help them study, so we did a TRIBES activity c...

That pretty much sums up the week...it was a busy one! There was a lot of action in the science lab this week. The 7th graders were working on a lab in which they were experimenting with how music affects concentration. They ran a control test by having classmates complete a short task (maze or crossword puzzle) with no music. They followed up the control test by having the test subjects listen to a genre of music they chose while doing a similar test and then repeating it with a different genre. It was an interesting lab to do, but it needed some extra behavior management. This was tricky because there were a couple of students who needed some special attention when it came to behaviors. Another thing that threw a wrench into the system is that a few students REALLY (I MEAN REALLY) struggled with the word searches. So...I already know that when I repeat this lab next year I am going to have the scientists giving the word search set a time limit and check to see how many words the test...