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.
Nov 21
This post was originally published on the CORELaborate WA blog here. Is the Scientific Method dead? Does the NGSS have guidelines for students as experimental designers? Before NGSS, WA State’s revised 2009 Essential Academic Learning Requirements (EALR) number 2 was the Inquiry standard for questioning and investigating. That provide a framework for how Science teachers …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/11/21/ngss-the-scientific-method/
Nov 14
Just out on Larry Ferlazzo’s EdWeek Blog, Classroom Q&A with Larry Ferlazzo, is the response to the question about the biggest challenge facing Science Teachers. Last week I shared a link to Larry’s BAM Radio show where I got to share my thoughts on the topic and here’s a link to the follow-up EdWeek blog …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/11/14/response-to-the-biggest-challenge-science-teachers-face/
Nov 04
I was so happy and honored to be asked by Larry Ferlazzo (check out Larry’s blog if you don’t read it already) to be a panelist on his BAM! Radio Network show, Classroom Q&A! We tackled the topic of solutions to the biggest challenges facing Science Teachers. It was so cool! I’ve embedded it above …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/11/04/biggest-challenges-facing-science-teachers/
Oct 20
I’ve watched these two powerful videos, which seem to be meant to go together or at least were inspired by the same problem. The problem? Modern day schooling, which hasn’t changed enough to do right by our modern day students. It’s no secret that education, as a system, is slow to change. That even with …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/10/20/how-much-change-is-enough/
Oct 18
STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. This has worried teachers of the arts and the humanities because at face value it seems to exclude those disciplines. I don’t know it was meant to at first since the STEM fields were competing against the others at a time when our country wanted …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/10/18/what-is-stem-2/
Oct 17
Originally posted on CORElaborate here (re-posted here in its entirety with the author’s – me – permission). I don’t use rubrics very often and when it comes time to have students self-assess I prefer proficiency scales. When I last wrote about using CER, Claims – Evidence – Reasoning, for having students write experiment conclusions, I …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/10/17/cer-rubric/
Oct 14
Originally posted on CORElaborate here (re-posted here in its entirety with the author’s – me – permission). Time for NGSS Shifts! I wrote a series of posts on the shifts in teaching called for in the Common Core English Language Arts (ELA) standards. Now it’s time to look at the shifts called for by the …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/10/14/ngss-science-shifting/
Oct 03
I started watching this season of Survivor. I’ve always liked Survivor and reality games like that because it appeals to the part of me that likes to see how people act in out of the ordinary situations. I did major in psychology in college after all. This season they are pitting Millennials against Gen X’ers. …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/10/03/medals-for-all-vs-medals-for-finishing/
Sep 23
Post originally published here. I can’t believe that we’re already at the end of our third week of the new school year! The first two weeks are a blur and I feel like we’re just starting to get into Science now! I didn’t want to talk too much the first week of school, which were …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/09/23/setting-up-science-notebooks/
Aug 24
After 14 years of collecting water quality data with my students on our neighborhood creek I finally have a way to get temperature over the summer to compare to the spring and winter! Thanks to the Olympic STEM Pathways Partnership (OSPP) work we’ve been doing I have temp sensors that I can put in the …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/08/24/chimacum-creek-summer-2016-temp/
I'm a Curipod Ambassador! :)
I've presented at NCCE
2016, 2017, 2019, 2022,
2023, 2024, and 2025!
I presented at WSTA 2015!
