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.
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/
Jul 22
We talk about failure being important. We also are warned to not make failure okay, in and of itself, because what we want for our children is to see that failure is part of success. The most successful people fail a lot! I know failure. I’ve failed a lot, at a lot of things. I …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/07/22/failure-at-finances/
Jul 21
Wednesday, July 20, the WA state Olympic STEM Pathways Partnership (OSPP) teacher leaders were able to attend an awesome event at the Galaxy Uptown Theater in Gig Harbor to review our first year of work, our second summer of training, and to look forward to our second year working with collaborating teachers in our schools! …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/07/21/imagine-inspire-innovate-waospp/
Jul 08
The Common Core English Language Arts (CCSS ELA) standards were developed to provide our kids a relevant, engaging, rigorous education. At the heart of the standards are three major shifts to the way we teach our students. This year I have been fortunate enough to have one of the bloggers on our state’s CoreLaborate blog. …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/07/08/the-core-shifts-the-way-we-teach/
Jul 07
Chimacum, WA is home to a lovely lake that for a few months of the year, late spring and early summer, becomes toxic, deadly toxic! Some of my 6th graders researched our deadly lake and wrote about it. Here’s a great blog post written by one 6th grader about our deadly lake!
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/07/07/6th-grader-writes-about-our-own-deadly-lake/
Jul 06
This 6th grader wrote a nice piece for a water pollution Public Service Announcement (PSA) activity we did in class. Check out her blog post and see what you think!
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/07/06/6th-grade-ocean-pollution-public-service-announcement/
I'm a Curipod Ambassador! :)
I've presented at NCCE
2016, 2017, 2019, 2022,
2023, 2024, and 2025!
I presented at WSTA 2015!
