Kind of an odd one this week

I would say that odd would kind of be a way to describe this week (but mainly just the last two days). My mornings were pretty much "business as usual" with the 7th graders. We are in the depths of studying physics, and the students are learning about transfers of kinetic energy. To show their understanding of the concept, the students needed to create a demonstration for the class and then explain the energy transfers that were present. I told them that they needed to be creative with their demonstrations (I didn't want to see 9 presentations of one student tossing a ball to another student and explaining that the kinetic energy in their arm was transferred to the ball and made it move), and I wasn't disappointed. They came up with some pretty good demonstrations and explanations. Many of the students still wanted to show off their athletic abilities, so we did need to borrow some sporting equipment from the gym teachers. Most of the demonstrations needed to happen outside, but there were a couple groups who set up demonstrations using balls on a ramp or with dominoes. One of the groups demonstrated transfers using a kickball, and then we took advantage of some of the outside time with a short kickball game (keeping track of the energy transfers, of course :-) We lost track of all of them after a little while, but it was definitely a good opportunity to burn off some energy...which they definitely needed to do! Studying these energy transfers has definitely been fun because we are going to take it to the next level and finish the year off in 7th grade by building some Rube Goldberg machines. They are complicated machines with several steps in order to complete simple tasks (if you aren't familiar with them, think about the game Mouse Trap...or better yet, search YouTube!). We are going to use the Engineering Design Process to help develop the machines, and I am looking forward to how they turn out!
So, the odd part of the week has really been due to 8th grade these last couple of days. On Wednesday, the band students took a trip down to Wisconsin Dells, leaving me with about one-third of one class being gone and half of another. Today the art students took a trip to the art museum in Milwaukee, leaving me with one-third of one class at school and half of the other. To be perfectly honest, it was still "business as usual" with the 8th graders as well, but it was just really odd having so few students. The students are currently in the process of giving presentations for Science Genius Time (our semester-long self-guided projects), and it especially worked out well for the students who presented today. Today's students are rather timid when it comes to getting up in front of the class, so the smaller class size today helped to put them at ease. Only a few more presentations and then they will be in the books!

Mindfulness thought for the week: Don't let yourself be the biggest bully that you have. --Tom J Deters (on the ProYou Podcast)