Thoughts on the Matter

For Teacher Appreciation Week one of my students gave the most amazing gift, a decorated rock. He was a little upset, since it got a little banged up on the way to school, so he told me he'd make me another.  This rock changed me. It was the inspiration I needed to be the change. In our area there is a lot of hiding rocks for people to find.  It's a random act of kindness, spread the joy, heart lifting type of movement.  There are groups for different areas sharing the rocks they have hidden or found.  I knew that one of the schools in our district had a big event creating and hiding rocks in Palatka and I just thought the concept was so stinking cool. So my classes decorated rocks.  Well they decorated rocks based on things they learned in science class this year.  Then they had to describe what the rock was, why they created it, and provide another detail about that topic.  We posted this to our Seesaw accounts.  This allowed student...

You may be aware of a new thing that seems to be sweeping the area (perhaps the world) decorated rocks. People are hiding decorated rocks for others to find and spread a little joy.  So some of my students have joined in.  Their task was to create a a rock that represents something they learned in science this year.  You can see the first of their creations in the photo below. And because I can't just leave it at that they have also included why they created the rock that they did, with a bit of an explanation. You can find those on my class blog  here.   I've hidden these rocks around my campus, hoping other students will find these treasures.  Hoping that if others find them they'll either keep them or hide them for others to find.

This week the solar system projects started rolling in.  This is a project that I have a love/hate relationship with.  The students for the most part genuinely look forward to doing it.  I have tried to kill it, but I just can't seem to let it go. As the student proudly parade in with these projects I think hard as to why am I making them do this?  What is the value?  Despite the fact that every student is doing the exact same project, the same requirements, the outcomes are completely varied.   Here are some samples of my students' awesome projects.  I am so very proud of all the hard work they put in.

Last year Edcamp St. Aug was my first Edcamp.  It changed my life, no really it did.  I went in extremely unsure of myself, not knowing what to expect, I was with my principal, and I knew no one else.  I was completely out of my comfort zone.  Best. Day. Ever.  The atmosphere was inspiring.  The student led tour of the absolutely AMAZING Palencia Elementary School was jaw dropping.  The stuff they do at this school; gardens, recycling, weather station, solar panels, nighttime ice making for daytime cooling purposes…. WOW! Above the physical atmosphere, the people, oh man the people.  So crazy teachers, principals, coaches that give up part of their Saturday to learn and share with others, these people are who I want to align myself with.  These are the people that are going to change the world. I want to be one of those people. I don’t exactly remember all the sessions I went to.  I walked away with more information that I could ...

Building background knowledge is hugely important in making connections.  Students come from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences and need some common experiences to draw from.  While force and motion are very easy to relate to real world situations, I feel that it also important to throw a little relevance and fun into the learning equation. Enter marbles ..... Discovery Education had a really great article that discussed how marbles and force were connected.  The diagrams were great, and encouraged students to play and get that hands on experience.  We created a marble circle in our room and I printed out instructions , so students would have some rules to go by.  The marble circle was on the small side and the students encountered some glitches with the prescribed rules and tweaked them to meet their needs.  All in all, marbles were a success.  Students were able to effectively communicate what they were learning as they were playing t...

I was pretty excited today.  I've been thinking up ways to include my Dash and Dot robots into the curriculum, and today it became a reality. We're learning about force and motion. The particular standard we are working on is SC. 5.P.13.2  Investigate and describe that the greater the force applied to it, the greater the change in motion of a given object. We used Blockly to create a very simple code to send Dash 100 cm.  We attached the bulldozer bar to Dash and placed a small plastic golf ball in front of him.  At first we set him to normal speed, and recorded how far the ball rolled after he stopped.  We repeated this a few times to make sure our data was reliable.   Once we had some information, students hypothesized what would happen to the ball if we changed Dash's speed.  We slowed him down to "very slow".  After students saw the results we changed Dash's speed to "very fast". Students were able to draw some conclusions a...

I attended a workshop on Personalized Learning at FETC, and although I am not prepared to make that jump I think that  blended learning is more my speed.  I am working hard to incorporate the 4 C's in to my classroom (critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity).  As part of this I have really embraced the idea of teaching with centers rather than whole group instruction.  This changes my role from the "sage on the stage" to the "guide on the side".  I'm okay with this.  Students need to be responsible for their own learning. I am not fully prepared to give up on whole group entirely.  I think students need that whole group experience to hear a common message.  To set the stage for the learning I like to use interactive presentations such as Pear Deck.  This allows for me to have some formative assessment, and make decisions. This is the run down of day one of my science stations for Force and Motion.  It was a li...