I teach 5th and 6th grade STEM in the lovely Pacific Northwest in a small, rural town called Chimacum. My goal is to help students discover that all learning is life-long and that 21st century tools can be used for work as well as fun.
Mar 28
Chimacum Middle School 6th graders have been monitoring our neighborhood creek, Chimacum Creek, for the past 15 years! When asked to to develop an integrated STEM unit this year for our 6th graders I went to my fellow 6th grade teachers, the Humanities teacher, Ms. Langston, and the Math teacher, Mr. Meacham, and asked them …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2017/03/28/a-stewardship-stem-project/
Mar 27
This is my 4th straight year of getting to attend the Northwest Council for Computer Education or NCCE’s three-day conference (although last year I was only able to attend for one day)! This year it was in Portland, OR. NCCE goes back and forth between Seattle and Portland and this year it was Portland’s turn …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2017/03/27/my-ncce17-takeaways/
Mar 14
Thanks for Kae Novak, a true games master, I was interviewed by Classcraft about how I use Lucas Gillispie’s World of Warcraft in Schools curriculum with my 6th graders! While I gamify my Science classes, the class I teach where 6th graders play World of Warcraft is an example of Game-Based Learning or GBL as …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2017/03/14/world-of-warcraft-interview/
Mar 13
Thanks to my work with the Olympic STEM Pathways Partnership (OSPP), I was interviewed by WA STEM! They wrote a blog post about the work I am doing with my 6th grade Science students! Click on the graphic below to read it! What an honor! Thanks, OSPP and WA STEM! 🙂
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2017/03/13/wa-stem-interview/
Mar 09
Common Sense Media just published a report on how kids are responding to news. As an educator, I really appreciate seeing the perceptions of many kids to news and how media bombards us with stories that “sell” not to mention all the fake news and alternative facts that are dominating today. I also appreciate having …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2017/03/09/kids-take-on-fake-news/
Feb 28
This post was originally published on the WA CORELaborate site! In a way, school is already a game. Think about it. Think about your top performing or A students. They have figured out how to play the game of school. They know how to complete assignments, turn in their homework, do well on quizzes and …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2017/02/28/school-as-a-game/
Feb 16
Republishing this post to get new readers to our 6th grade blog. Here’s what one 6th grader has to say about trash: Trash Her thoughts are typical and they make sense. Yet how many people still toss trash out their car windows or decide to drop their trash on the ground instead of holding it …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2017/02/16/6th-graders-take-on-trash/
Feb 15
Republishing this post to get new readers to our 6th grade blog! And I don’t blame him. I think every single person on this planet will agree that clean water is better than polluted water, and that we should take care of our water, and yet we have polluted so much of our water. I …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2017/02/15/6th-grader-questions-water-pollution/
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2017/02/14/6th-grader-blogs-about-the-ills-of-money/
Feb 09
Republishing these posts to get new readers to my students’ class blog to inspire this new group to write posts! I do like to keep reminding myself that we’re not born racist. That could bring me down, thinking that people are still passing their racism along to their children but instead I like to think …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2017/02/09/a-6th-grader-blogs-about-racism/
I'm a Curipod Ambassador! :)
I've presented at NCCE
2016, 2017, 2019, 2022,
2023, 2024, and 2025!
I presented at WSTA 2015!
Feb 14
6th Grader Blogs About the Ills of Money!
February 14, 2017
Republishing this post to get new readers to our blog for this year’s 6th graders. This post got the most reads of all the posts from last year! One of our 6th graders published a blog post for our World Solutions Blog about the problems caused by our obsession with MONEY! If you have the …
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