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.
Apr 12
In my last post I shared learnings and takeaways from some Common Core ELA trainings I’ve attended, specifically implications around the first shift of the common core that states that our students need to be reading complex texts. In this post I’m going share my learning about CCSS-ELA Shift 2. Common Core Shift 2 states …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/04/12/text-is-boss/
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/04/11/food-miles-6th-grade-blog-post/
Mar 28
Back in 1998 my school put the first model of iMac in my classroom, the Bondi iMac pictured on the left. I rotated groups of students through the Bondi iMac as they created websites using HTML as part of the projects they were working on at the time. We’ve come a long way since the …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/03/28/older-imacs/
Mar 17
Here’s the latest 6th grade post in our class’s World Solutions Blog: Does Having a Growth Mindset Over a Fixed Mindset Really Matter? Click on the link above and read her post, it’s really good and has a fantastic Animoto video! Leave her a comment and share her post, please!
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/03/17/a-6th-graders-view-on-mindsets/
Mar 14
One of our 6th graders recorded this short video to share what it’s like stuttering! It’s short and well worth watching! Click here to visit our World Solutions Blog to watch his video, feel free to leave Isaac a comment!
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/03/14/6th-grader-shares-about-his-stuttering/
Mar 08
Spanish, Cuban, was my first language, I grew up speaking Spanish. Before I started going to school I watched Sesame Street on TV and learned enough English that by the time I went to school I could communicate in English! English came much easier to me than Spanish and even though I spoke Spanish everyday …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/03/08/our-world-solutions-blog-translated-into-spanish/
Mar 07
Our middle school is on Year 2 of our work with a WA STEM PD project. Here’s a video I put together to share the major highlights of our work with WA STEM: In the video I share some resources that we’ve been using for our PLC work. The WA STEM PD project was inspired …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/03/07/wa-stem-pd-work/
Mar 02
If you’ve been reading my 6th grader’s blog posts on our World Solutions blog and you’re a kid with great ideas, solutions or questions about why things are the way they are, submit a blog post to our blog and we’ll publish it for you! Just fill out the following form or click here if …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/03/02/want-to-write-a-guest-blog-post-on-our-world-solutions-blog/
Mar 02
Common Core State Standards-English Language Arts (CCSS-ELA) Shift 1: Regular practice with complex text and its academic language. In the last post I shared some of the research from a 2006 ACT study that found text complexity determines whether our students will be successful beyond high school or struggle. Students who did well with complex …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/03/02/implications-for-text-complexity-post-is-out/
Mar 02
We were working on a Science opener, just like we’ve done every single day this year. I always start each class with a cool Science opener from a book I bought years ago and took out of some cabinet after years of having forgotten about it. The opener question was to come up with differences …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/03/02/6th-graders-blog-about-world-problems/
I'm a Curipod Ambassador! :)
I've presented at NCCE
2016, 2017, 2019, 2022,
2023, 2024, and 2025!
I presented at WSTA 2015!
Apr 11
Food Miles 6th grade Blog Post
April 11, 2016
Food Miles? What is food miles, you ask? Check out this 6th grader’s summary of an awesome activity we did in class to raise student awareness of food traveling to get to your plates!