Etch 'n Sketch Reflections

When I think back to my years in 3rd grade, one occasional writing activity we would do was to write acrostic poems. Seeing as how this is Thanksgiving, the day dedicated to paying extra attention to what we are thankful for, I thought I would write an acrostic poem. The Office--I just finished the series today, and I am thankful for the hours of laughter! Holidays--having these days to surround myself with family and relaxation. Awesome colleagues--they have really helped my transition to 5th grade. New podcast episodes--they help to keep my before and after school commute enjoyable. Kindness--it goes such a long way. Friends--especially on dart night! Unbelievable students--they keep me on my toes! Love from my family--on the hard days, I know they are there for me! New school years--they are always full of excitement and new opportunities. Every student (yes, even the challenging ones)--they offer me the chance to get better at what I do. School--I love my job! Saturday...

I am feeling like this was the theme for this week, and I am defining as "teacher exhaustion due to student-friendship stress disorder." Common symptoms of student-friendship stress disorder are uncontrollable crying, irrational jumping to conclusions, and sudden unwillingness to talk to a friend about what is bothering you. Student-friendship stress disorder typically occurs due to a lack of empathy between friends, a reliance on a signal friend for all of your attention, or jealousy when a friend's circle of friendship begins to grow. Case Study 1: Student A is crying in class. Student B rushes over to console student A and to ask what is wrong. Student A does not respond. The case study manager, CSM, (also known as "teacher") intervenes and offers student A the opportunity to take a break for a moment to discuss the matter. Student A does not wish to discuss the matter but takes a break to remove attention from herself. After a short while, the CSM finds an ...

Wrapping up the first quarter also meant wrapping up the first unit on ecosystems. Our unit for the second quarter deals with the Earth's 4 spheres: the geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. The geosphere relates to the earth (soil, rocks, minerals, etc.), the biosphere is made up of all living things, hydrosphere is all the water, and the atmosphere is all things air. We are learning about how all 4 spheres work together in order to make Earth the wonderful place that it is, and we are investigating the different ways that the spheres interact. It will be nice because our first unit on ecosystems will provide the students with a lot of background knowledge for the biosphere studies of the unit. I've got a great set of short, engaging YouTube videos from the Crash Course Kids series that really help provide the students with a solid base of the concepts, and then we will be working on some projects related to each sphere. Throw in some occasional Kahoots and Quizle...

Just like that, the first quarter of school is done. It also brought about the end of our ecosystem unit. On top of it all, it was a very long week! I have been fighting a cold all week, so that is going to lead me to a rather abbreviated blog post for this week. Here goes! Monday: Students created and played review games to study for the ecosystem test! Students also began to take home the eco-columns. Tuesday: As a class, we completed a study guide, and students played review games with new groups (to test out the different games :-) Wednesday: Another round with the study guide to close up any misunderstandings/answer questions from the students and another round of review games; grades posted in the grade book for quarter reports. Today: TEST DAY! I haven't graded them yet, but from just working my way around the classroom during the test it looks like they did well. FUN TIP! If you type up your own tests, insert the students' names into the test, such as "________...

You know, it's one thing to try and teach large groups of children on a normal day. It's a totally different beast to try and teach large groups of children on Halloween (especially when there is trick-or-treating that will be happening after school). But to teach large groups of children on Halloween AND have it snowing all day?!? I was prepared for some craziness today. To be honest, though, the craziness wasn't fully there. Sure, there was definitely a buzz of excitement throughout the day, and at times the students struggled with maintaining composure, but it was better than I expected. Now we will just have to see how things go tomorrow following the aftermath of sugar-highs... The week as a whole went pretty well. On Monday we headed into the lab to check on our ecocolumns and an acid rain simulation we set up at the end of last week. The ecocolumns, for the most part, have been holding steady these last few weeks. I'm pretty sure that all of the crickets in the ...

What a week! It was a week full of a variety of different activities, with some extra excitement today! Our main task for science was the presentations about pollution that the students were working on last week. My initial plan was for the students to begin presenting on Monday. I had left instructions for the students to share any digital parts of the presentations with me when they were finished (this would allow me to see how their progress was coming along even though I wasn't there last Friday). There were around 25 groups between the 3 classes, but I had only received work from about one-third of the groups--this told me right away that I would need to plan a little more work time into the schedule for Monday. However, that allowed me to tighten up the expectations for worktime on Monday for those groups that hadn't finished. About 90% of the groups were done and ready to present on Tuesday. We had some very nice presentations. Most of the groups chose the typical Goog...

The science classroom has been a buzz of activity this week! With our ecocolumns together, we began to discuss how ecosystems can affect one another (natural disasters that start in one area and spread to another) and then built towards how people often have an effect on ecosystems through pollution. We talked about how pollution that happens in one area can spread to another area. So, if we were to pollute the terrarium (on the top of the ecocolumn), that pollution could be transferred to the aquarium at the bottom when it rains (when we water the terrarium). This led us to some real-world examples and our first research project. I introduced 3 types of pollution that are spread through the water cycle: acid rain, fertilizer runoff, and road salt pollution. The students formed teams and chose one of the pollutions to learn more about from a variety of resources. Next, the students chose a presentation method for how they will share what they've learned with the class. I gave them ...