The Third Day of School

On the third day...there was curriculum!

On the third day the first thing I plan to do is to fill out my "Class Deck".  I have every student make me an index card into a sports card.  They put their stats on it - what type of learner, how good at directions they were, and the number of labels on their map.  I don't torture them and make them draw themselves though, lol.   Facts about themselves, goals for the future, etc will go on the cards.  This usually takes about 10-15 minutes to get underway - but I want to add one more thing to their cards: height in cm and to do that...

*drumroll please*

Unit One: The Tools of the Earth Scientist! (catchy, I know)
First real lesson of the year.

Hopefully everyone has suppplies by now - especially the notebook.

I get to walk students through the daily game - come in, get out notebook, write down daily journal question, wait for lesson...I always feel like a prick doing these kinds of speeches.

First set of FITB (fill in the blank) notes of the year go out along with the unit organizer.  Kid'll groan.  Whatever.

My first real lesson is on the metric system and why it's baller.

• A brief history of ancient measurements and how they'd be confusing.
• How the metric and english systems came about
• why we use metrics
• Length, volume, mass
• Types of equipment we use to measure these 3
• How to measure in metric - volume and mass (skip for today)
• How to measure in metric - distance
• How to read the METER stick.  39ish" != 36"  
• Most of my students are 14-16.  Over half cannot do this skill the first day.
• Take some measurements of each other's ancient units "span, hand, etc"
• I got a little worksheet where they can record this if they want to keep it.
• Usually by now the first meter stick lightsaber fights have started and I have to sit the whole class down and re-discuss lab safety and how much of a d*** I plan on being about it.
• [edit] To conclude and "exit slip" out of the lesson I have students fill out a one page 8x11 summary page for their note&journal checks.  I'll have to explain that they must somehow address every Bubble on the page.  For example, in the first unit I'm going over the 3 topics in the picture below.  
• The Summary Page will look the same except each will have it's own page with more detail bubbles for each.

End of the period should be rolling around.  One last thing:  fill out height on the class deck cards and turn them in!  

With any leftover time in the period I have a bucket full of wood blocks of various sizes that I let the kids practice taking measurements on.  Which is a good idea.  Because the test has a hands on portion.  And some kids always bomb it.  Hope you have a good third day in EARTH SCIENCE.

Sidebar: Assessing Class Participation (aka - DO I GET POINTS FOR FILLING IN THESE NOTES!?!?)
I used to collect packets, grade practice worksheets,give points for notes and reviews completed, ugg.  too much time.  Kids cared about their points on the worksheet more than listening and learning the skill I wanted them to.  MY CLASS IS NOT A VIDEO GAME YOU NEED POINTS IN.  LEARN SOMETHING. (That's a rant for midterms)

I think this year I'm going to have my kids hand 2 things for class points - the daily journals we do, and note summary pages.
Daily Journals:  Every day I have a "question of the day", "warmup", "Class starter", "Bell ringer" etc...they told me I should do this in college.  My school likes the idea of the 2 minute "do it as everyone is getting settled" activity.  I expand on mine and make it a bit longer.  Every day the kids have some type of journal to do.  It's usually a "what do you know, before I tell you what you'll need to know" type of question, or something that makes them access prior knowledge.  Sometimes it's a football question.  Who cares?  I'll throw an arbitrary 5pts/journal entry and 10 points for summary pages.

Summary Pages:  I'm trying something new with note taking this year.  In the past I've had my powerpoints and my fill in the blank notes as ...well basically mandated now a days.  Kids need fill in the blank notes to understand a powerpoint I guess.  I'm going to keep the fill in the blank notes but at the end of every lecture the students will be assigned to write a summary page for that day's topic.  I want them to fill a page with notes, pictures, diagrams - whatever they thought was important and how they can relate to it.  I expect most kids to just ask me what they should be writing and whine for me to tell them what to put so they can go another 10 minutes without having to think in the morning.

So at the end of every unit my students should have ~10 (2 weeks worth usually) journal entrys and 3-5 summary pages in their notebooks.  About 100 points of "pay attention, write this down" time per unit.  I collect notebooks before the test.  I think they'll hate it.  It's going to be awesome.

The Second Day of School

In an earlier post  I talked about some activities I wanted to include as part of my getting to know you routine when the year starts.  In this post I'd like to get into the second day of school.

First to clarify:  Our first day of school is on the stupid activity schedule.  This means one of my classes is a full 50 minutes and the rest are 23 minutes.  AWESOME.  I get double awkward time with one group and have to over plan for that class.  Thankfully it's Biology and I have plenty to use do in there.

Earth Science is a different matter.  Here's a recap of what day one will really look like:

Class always starts the same the first day.  I assign seats, show the kids where they sit and hand out the first day of school pamphlets: Syllabus, Lab Safety, Expectations, etc.  This usually takes me about 20 minutes.  I to end class and for homework I'll have to assign a Learning Styles Survey.  Here's some examples:


http://www.personal.psu.edu/bxb11/LSI/LSI.htm
http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=younger

I have one on paper that I like to use, but you get the idea.

Day 2:


When day 2 starts I want to stall out curriculum usually - kids are still transferring in and out.

To start out the day I'll go over their learning styles and what it means to be a different type of learner.  I'll have to throw together a powerpoint of these that correlates with their homework.  I want the kids to really focus on their strengths this year.

From here I'll transition into something fairly simple.   I'll hand out a blank 8"x11" sheet to each student and tell them to draw me the world and label as many things as they can.  I'm still debating what other rules to throw in there.  Here's what I've been brainstorming:

• You must fit the entire globe on the sheet (as it if were a map)
• Things to label:  Oceans, Seas, Rivers, Lakes, Continents, Countries, Cities, etc.
• Time limit: 25 minutes.

I want to have the students save this as part of an ongoing portfolio.  My hope is they get a little better at drawing and understanding different parts of maps, geography and topography throughout my course.

I'll do a quick show and tell or make everyone hold up their maps to share really quick.  I'll explain what the maps are for and we'll move into...

Directions Quiz Time!

I think I'm going to take one of these  Origami Foldables and write out some instructions that go with the pictures and challenge my kids to follow the directions as best they can.  I'll turn it into a timed race and have 2 categories - best made and fastest made origami animals.  If any time is left over I'll let them work on additional origami.

That should wrap up my 2nd day of school.  That means day 3 planning is on the horizon!

Tools of Earth Science

My first unit this year is shaping up something like this:

1.  What is the Earth? - basic facts about the planet
2.  What tools do scientists use to study the earth?

To cover #1 it's usually a pretty cut and dry quiz with matching or short answers.
To cover #2 I break down what skills I need my kids to know:

• Qualitative vs. Quantitative observations
• Inference vs. Observations
• The Metric System and Conversions
• Measure mass, volume and distance in metrics
• The process of the scientific method

The unit is broken down into short lectures with accompanying notes and then a practice sheet for homework.  After lecture days there is a lab or activity which incorporates 1 or more of the skills that were covered in lecture.  We'll see how much I change up this year once the school year gets underway.