The 6th grade has officially started Chimacum Middle School’s Water Quality Project! The trimester ends on March 22 even though we are having our trimester break on March 16 (we never changed the date of the break even though the trimester end day was moved back due to the snow week).
The 7th graders are busy working on the Earth Movement Project. They are taking notes on earthquakes and volcanoes in outline format. All this note-taking and learning will lead to students creating websites to share what they’ve learned and to explain what is happening along the plate boundaries at the specific regions of the earth that each team was assigned.
My 8th graders are working to complete their websites before March 22 (the end of the trimester) so that I can upload them all to the Internet. As soon as they are done and uploaded I will put links to them here. For the last trimester I will be teaching Latin!
I will be busy working on grading notebooks again (didn’t I just do that?) the week of March 12 so I can have progress reports ready by the week of March 19. I know that leaves kids little time to make up any missing work but the fact that I’m available everyday at lunch and I encourage kids to stay caught up really should be enough. Kids have been working on their science for two-thirds of the year and they really should start taking on some of the responsibility for staying caught up and/or making up missing work in a timely manner. If any student really wants to know how he or she is doing all he or she needs to do is to make an appointment with me after school or at lunch to take a look at his or her notebook and find out what needs to be redone or improved or made up. I feel that all my students can succeed if they stay caught up by doing their work in class. I have told several students that work they do not do in class because they are goofing off or socializing deserves the low grade that it gets. I really don’t feel that offering them the opportunity to take it home teaches them the right lesson. It’s a struggle.
I’m also busy working with representatives from all the other Chimacum School buildings and our two fantastic principals to write a proposal to Best Buy for a $250,000 district-wide national tech grant! The fact that we got the $15,000 school grant from Best Buy makes us eligible to apply for the big one! We’re the only school in Washington State who can apply! Wish us luck, we really need that money. I will have subs in my classes on Tuesday, 3/13, and Thursday, 3/15.
