Etch 'n Sketch Reflections

Well, if I thought some of my other weeks of school this year were interesting, then this one definitely takes the cake. Let's actually rewind to last Friday. Last week was my week of meetings, and it ended with an IEP meeting for one of my students during the last hour of the day. Just before the meeting began, there was an email sent out explaining that the students would be taking their Chromebooks home (they usually stay at school) as a precaution for school closings. At that time, it had not yet been determined that our school would be closed, though there were some other districts in the state that had closed school. With about 10 minutes left in the school day, one of my colleagues came into the meeting and explained our students were going to be returning from their specials early so that we could explain everything about the Chromebooks. The students were obviously in a tizzy, full of questions about what was happening and if we were going to have school this week. I could...

That is literally the best way to describe this week. I honestly can't remember the last time I had this many meetings in one week! Monday brought about a surprise meeting right away in the morning. One of my 5th-grade colleagues was sick on Monday morning and was supposed to attend a 504 meeting before school. A 504 plan, for those of you not in the education world, addresses ways that schools will support students with disabilities that aren't part of a special education program. There are any number of reasons as to why students might qualify for a 504 plan--some examples are students with ADHD or cases of anxiety. The 504 plan then lays out strategies that the students can use or accommodations that staff can put in place in order to help the student be more successful. So, one of the school counselors came into my room and explained the situation. What made things more interesting was the fact that I was currently in charge of watching about 35 students during Peaceful St...

And you know what that means...it's almost Saturday. I'm really looking forward to sleeping in. My body needs it. I can't say that it was an incredibly hectic week, but it was just a hodgepodge of a week. Getting to the bottom of some student behaviors was probably the most tiring (as it usually is). The one really nice thing about the week was that science was pretty consistent (in terms of what the students were working on) for the whole week. The first 3 days were pretty much research and preparation for constellation presentations to be given today and tomorrow. That meant lesson planning for the week was easy. Most of my week during science was spent checking in with students and the progress of their projects. The only frustrating part of it was some students not taking advantage of using the recommended resources that I had shared with them. I'm not really sure how many times I repeated the phrase, "Well, if you go to THIS website that I have included in the...

This week we are heading for the stars as we finish up another one of our Earth and Space Science standards. Our standard deals with collecting data and looking for patterns related to shadows, day and night, and the seasonal appearance of stars in the sky. What better way to talk about the seasonal appearance of stars in the sky than to look at the bigger "picture" and focus on constellations? We spent the first couple of days building some background about what constellations are and why some constellations are only visible at certain times of the year. Part of the background learning that we did brought up the fact that many constellations have a mythological connection, and some of the students were able to make some quick connections to their reading units last year related to mythology (it's always nice to see that little spark in their eyes and to hear "I remember when we learned...). There are also a few students who are REALLY into the Zodiac signs, so we m...

There's a saying that teachers wear a lot of different hats as part of their job. Well, this week I had my detective hat on, and I would say that I wore it well. Yesterday morning, a group of girls came up to me pretty much as soon as the day had started. Apparently, a rumor had been started by about one of the girls in the group. On went my detective hat! From the sounds of it, the rumor had not been widely spread, so that was a definite plus. I collected the information that the girls could provide me and set off on my mission. Now, luckily, with the way that our schedule is organized, the students are actually coming into school and settling into the classrooms before school academically starts. We call it "Peaceful Start." It's a time for the students to peacefully ease into the school day (hopefully). Since it was peaceful start, I had the flexibility to check into my new case and interview potential suspects. The girl who the rumor was about had given me the na...

It was, all in all, a pretty good week! I've been able to stay up to date on all of my grading, there haven't been any big behavior issues, and the students just came off of an activity that they really seemed to like! So, in science, we have been all about gravity, and the standard the students had to meet was to support an argument that the gravitational force exerted by Earth is directed down. To show that they understood and could carry out the expectations of the standard, I had the students give demonstrations of gravity in action. However, along with the demonstration (not too hard to do; you just have to drop something :-), the students needed to give an explanation about what force is and why gravity is a force, as well as explaining why dropped objects go towards Earth and not towards any other objects. What the students liked about the demonstrations is that they got to make videos (screencasts) using their Chromebooks. Seeing the excitement and engagement that they...

In addition to teaching science, I also team-teach language arts. I don't really blog about this other part of my job as a 5th-grade teacher very much because, well, a lot of the excitement that we have in my class is in science. Plus, if I blogged about everything I did at school, then this weekly blog would get rather long (and I don't know if I would have the energy to keep up with it). Anyway, I think that teaching writing is probably one of the most challenging things to teach. The other subjects, for the most part, are very concrete, while writing can oftentimes be abstract. Trying to help children get their ideas down on paper (or a computer screen) in an original way is quite the task, and it was definitely the stress point for the week as we are trying to finalize our writing projects. The students are writing informational papers on topics of their choosing, and throughout the course of the unit, we have slowly been introducing, practicing, and applying different asp...