one school week and one school day left before our much belated spring break. its so strange to have our major break of the spring semester come four weeks before the last day of school. we'll come back from break and it will be one slide into summer ( Read more... )

I conduct my math and science lessons in small groups of 3 or 4. for math, this isnt a problem in terms of time. a lesson takes about twenty minutes, i can get through the entire class in approximately one hour, giving everyone individual attention. science is a different matter. each lesson is structured to last about 45 to 60 minutes. so i ( Read more... )

seventh and eighth grades seem to be making huge amounts of progress lately. but i cant help but wonder how much of it is growing maturity, and how much is submission to strict rules ( Read more... )

science fair went off well. nobody died, so that's good. however, now my principal is bugging me to name an overall school winner, instead of just picking a first, second, and third place from within each grade. I have no idea how to fairly choose an overall school winner. if we had a meeting of all the judges to that extent, maybe then we could ( Read more... )

starting to get frustrated with science fair, because i suspect that at least one student may be falsifying their data. and theyre so bad at faking data, that it doesn't make any sense at all ( Read more... )

one week down on science fair preparations. the hardest part is prolly letting go of my own personal insistence that science fair projects should be a full scientific inquiry into academic topics with interesting and compelling results from which to draw valid conclusions. im learning to forego that instinct in favor of the kids picking topics ( Read more... )

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Well, I survived the field trip to Alamogordo, The New Mexico Museum of Space History, and White Sands National Monument. It was all slightly more stressful than I would have liked, but I learned how I can make sure that next year is better ( Read more... )

last week i really put those alternative spring break college students to work in my classroom. they were indispensible when it came to using the microscopes in my seventh and eighth grade life science class, since that isnt really my forte. it let me do a lot more complicated stuff with the centers in my science classes, and get a lot more done ( Read more... )