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.
Feb 01
So I am continuing to survey my students. It’s our midterm and halfway through our school year so I wanted to check in and see how they’re all doing. After the positive exit slip experience I had last week I thought this week’s survey would be cool. It was cool but not so easy to …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/02/01/change-is-hard/
Jan 29
I was showing my classes this awesome video about the power of feedback. It’s about six minutes long and I think everyone should see it, kids of all ages. At one point in the video the educator mentions that in the expeditionary learning school kids critique each other’s work and redraft it unlike, “regular schools.” …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/01/29/getting-called-out/
Jan 29
We got an opportunity to go naturemapping so I volunteered our 8th graders since they’re all learning Life Science this year! An amazing AmeriCorps Volunteer, the one who taught my 8th graders last year about Rain Gardens, organized the whole trip for us! We were very fortunate indeed. We took over 70 kids on a …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/01/29/naturemapping-field-trip/
Jan 25
Midterm is upon us and I reminded my students of how things are different at this time in an ungraded classroom. I hear them talking about what grades they are getting in their other classes because at midterm teachers prepare progress reports for families to see how their child is doing halfway through the trimester. …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/01/25/student-survey-time/
Jan 24
After starting the school year with student-led assemblies that didn’t include awards or students of the month, I thought change was upon my school. I wrote a post about how cool it was. That post was quickly followed by another, I Celebrated Too Soon, because right after publishing the celebratory post we had a faculty …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/01/24/healthy-discussing/
Jan 24
I came across this post on SmartBlog on Education written by Paul Cancellieri (@mrscienceteach) on grading. Paul makes another great case not only for NOT using grades as carrots and sticks but also for doing away with grades (my take away from reading his post). Here’s his post: Grades as Measurements
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/01/24/more-reasons-to-go-gradeless/
Jan 22
 Coming up on three years ago, after 19 years of teaching, I began to question grading. I wrote a blog post titled, Do Grades Help or Hinder Learning? I knew that grading, the ways I had tried it until then, was not working. Grades were not motivating all of my students, it was the focus …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/01/22/why-go-gradeless/
Jan 14
I wrote Shift Happens just a bit too soon. I was celebrating the fact that we started our year without achievement awards or student of the month awards. Then I noticed that PBIS was on the agenda of our upcoming faculty meeting. When the topic came up it was mentioned that nearly half the year …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/01/14/i-celebrated-too-soon/
Jan 09
Very close to two years ago I wrote a post and one of the main topics was school awards ceremonies. That spurred some conversation with kids in my classes and with kids in my advisory. You see, our student advisory groups, each led by an adult staff member, are the ones mostly responsible for putting …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/01/09/shift-does-happen/
Jan 06
Thinking about homework again I’ve heard some of the reasons for giving homework and it boils down to trust. It seems, by the way some teachers talk, that they don’t trust that parents are properly preparing their children. Some teachers worry that parents don’t read to their kids or don’t encourage their kids to read …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/01/06/hw-and-trust/
I'm a Curipod Ambassador! :)
I've presented at NCCE
2016, 2017, 2019, 2022,
2023 and 2024!
I presented at WSTA 2015!
