Happy Turkey Day

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! And go Patriots!!

First Nine Weeks

We got the results from our first nine weeks tests, and the improvements from last year were quite dramatic. Last year, our average was about 42%, this year it is about 55%. The numbers are still low, but huge improvements from last year. We used some of our lessons from last year, but the lessons in reading comprehension have to be part of the change in test scores. I hope this trend continues!

Common Plan

The fabulous Mollie turner and I and one other Earth Science teacher have utilized common planning this year and our first nine weeks scores are around 11% higher! Yes, we have to plan after school but it only takes about 20 minutes and we plan 1 week at a time. I write the lesson plans, our other teacher makes the copies, and Mollie has been creating the assessments. It seems to be working!

VAST

The VAST conference is this weekend (Nov 18-20) in Hampton, VA. Anyone going?
I hope to blog about what I learned and if you are looking for anything in particular let me know so I can be on the look out. Hope you all have a great week.

Technology

How are you using technology in your classroom? The reason I post this is that I just got this really cool document camera so I was inspired to create this post. I have used the following;

-Projector

-Youtube

-Online course (desire to learn, odyssey)

-Web quest

-Blogging

-Online SOL testing (jlab)

-Probeware (Q5+)

-Document camera (elmo)

And that is just this year. I am also developing an online oceanography course for WHRO that will go out to 18 different districts next year. It is on the D2L or desire to learn platform. Well time to work on that. Happy posting.

How are you using blogs?

Just wonder if you are blogging in your classes? Here is my blog! Feel free to critique.

http://blogs.spsk12.net/1068

The pictures are of the Keck Telescopes in Hawaii taken by my lovely wife.

Exhausted

It's Friday, and it feels like the end of a very long week. It's the end of the grading period, so we're pressed for time and probably won't have the opportunity to practice literacy strategies until after our nine weeks tests. I'm going to look for an article this weekend that we can use as a "hook" for our next unit... Geology! The students either love this unit or hate it, i.e.

"Ms. Turner...Why do we have to learn about rocks?"

I think we're going to work on "Visualizing" with this upcoming unit. There is a lot of visualization in geology, plate tectonics, etc. My students have a good handle on "Making Connections" and "Determining Important Ideas" as well as "asking Questions" because we have practiced those the most.

I am also working on incorporating humor into my lessons. We are using Marcia Tate's book "Worksheets Don't Grow Dendrites" and each of us chooses a strategy to incorporate into our classes. Today I unintentionally made my students laugh when I spontaneously started singing to help them remember which ocean experiences hurricanes and which experiences typhoons. Hey, I thought I sounded good.

Just wait 'til I break out my tap dancing skills.

New Cool Ideas?

Recently I made a lab from scratch that has students place thermometers on 30 degrees north and south and the equator. Then students then aim a light at the equator and record the change in temp of all thermometers. It went well and even our fabulous Mollie Turner let her students do the lab. I had my lowest level studnets run the lab and write the report and so far i have had great results. I will email the plan to you if you want.

So any cool new labs or ideas out there?

Training. Nov. 2nd staff day

I must say people are only receptive to change when they are ready to make a change. After giving two 40 minute training sessions on "mystery word of the day," and "ABC Graffiti," some of our staff wrote poor exit tickets.

We asked the staff to write on a post it note, "how will you implement this in your classroom." Just a few sour lemons wrote, "I will never it does not show them how to work in the real world." Some just wrote "Golden Lines."

Here we are showing staff a few more tricks to put up their selves, some more strategies to teach with and just a small few did not take it seriously. It makes me wonder why they even teach.

Sorry for venting, I guess a few our our staff are not ready to change. The majority of the staff seemed ready though. I am not sure why I let those small few get to me but it does.