Early one!

I think this might be the earliest blog post I've gotten in for this school year! Usually I blog around 9 or 10 at night after I've finished up my prep work for the following day. Because the life of a teacher usually consists of taking work home (especially for me this year). I know (or hope, at least) that as I get more experienced with the 7th and 8th grade curricula after this year, my nights won't be filled with as much prep work. But since everything is new this year, I know that I have extra learning to do on top of the daily lesson presentations. That's why my evening routine is typically get home, make dinner, do family stuff, and then settle in for prep work. Tonight, however, will be different--because tonight there is a Packer game, and I want to enjoy it :-)  And the work my students have been doing has allowed for this opportunity.
The 7th grade students have been learning about plate tectonics and plate boundaries. We've been utilizing a variety of resources (textbooks, videos, websites) to suit the students' learning styles as they complete a graphic organizer on the various boundaries. As this work was over the course of a couple days, it provided me with the opportunity to plan ahead. Yesterday was a good workday for most of the students, but a few of them struggled with some of their choices, so that limited some of the freedoms they had today. That resulted in some complaints, but they couldn't really argue with me when we reviewed the amount and quality of the work they accomplished yesterday.
My 8th graders have been continuing their learning about fossils, and we have spent the last few days moving from relative age (older/younger comparisons) into absolute age of fossils. To do this, the students have been making a timeline of a set of fossils. This provided us with the opportunity to bring in some math skills as well for the scale of the timelines (exciting for me since I love math, but not as much for the students..."Mr. Oetjen, this is science class, not math class!"). Nevertheless, we persevered :-) Along with placing the fossils on the appropriately measured spots, the students also needed to identify and research the geological time periods. This activity as a whole was definitely a test on the students' executive functioning skills!
All in all, it was a pretty good week, and knowing that next week is a short week before Thanksgiving is icing on the cake!

Mindfulness thought for the week: Helping people isn't a burden; it's an opportunity.
I got this thought from a TV show I watch called God Friended Me. I really like the show, as I think it has a positive message of helping others. Whatever your beliefs may be, I think it is worth a watch!

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