Summer

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer and are remembering to rest. Parsons - hows the new baby and mom doing?

Tomorrow is the last day of school!

One more half day, graduation, and two teacher work days. Hello summer!

Parsons is doing a great job!

Parsons is really going the extra mile this year. SOLs are over, and most teachers are just relaxing at this point. I mean, I have good lesson plans for the end of the year, but I am definitely not giving them a lot of extra work, tests, homework, etc. Actually, in my class right now my students are doing the teaching. They have chosen a topic and they must present their lesson to the class. But Parsons is teaching NEW material! I am impressed! Great job!

Last week

Any ideas for the last week of school?! I mean, we really have two weeks, but the final week is exams. I'm running thin on ideas...

Great Idea Gneiss Teacher

I will absolutely use that idea next year. I like the idea of having them making a children's book or a picture book.

I really like the virtual labs too... I don't know if your textbook came with virtual labs like ours did, but it's a great activity. The labs are very easy once you get used to them, and they love using the laptops. It's like a video game to them. If you don't have them you should definitely try to get your school to purchase a class set.

:)

Comment

I tried to comment after Gneiss teacher yesterday but my comment wouldn't post!

My co-teacher and I don't have a lot of time to lesson plan together due to our schedules. I use similar lessons for all of my classes, and the earth science department usually plans together. We make our plans so that they work for all levels. We make sure that we incorporate differentiated instruction, plan activities for all types of learners, make time for reading comprehension practice. Of course we have lots of hands-on activities and lots of labs and mini-labs, and we added virtual labs to the mix this year.

What I think we need to do is have some classes where we have several "centers" and make a small group section for remediation (specifically for the inclusion kids) so that they have extra help with soem of the concepts. That's where I'm lookign for some advice: do you have anything that you've done that works!?

I just got my score breakdown today and out of the few that failed, every one except 2 were in special education, so that tells me I do really need to focus on those students more next year...

SOL time... hmmm

Shout out to the teachers in my earth science department for crushing our scores from last year! Mark and Ray-Ray we deserve an early celebration! I think the kids responded well to the iTunes strategies as well as our common planning. I think we will do even better next year if we work more with our inclusion students and differentiate instruction from DAY ONE(as Mark suggested).

"Gneiss teacher" do you have any suggestions for inclusion students?