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.
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/
Jan 04
I’ve written about some of the great training I’ve had on Assessment for Learning (AfL) also known as formative assessment. I’ve gotten some great resources but frankly there is way too much. It’s quite overwhelming to keep up with my everyday work of guiding students along the learning experiences that I’m preparing for them AND …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/01/04/mass-production-feedback/
Jan 02
Not so much actually. I started the year all hopeful to gamify my classes. After reading Lee Sheldon’s book, The Multiplayer Classroom this past summer I was all ready to jump in with all my classes. I had badges all prepared for my students to place on their blogs as they showed evidence of understanding …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/01/02/gamified-classroom/
Dec 27
In Chimacum 8th graders get a full year of Life Science learning experiences. As 6th graders they learned about our neighborhood creek, Chimacum Creek, and tested the water quality. Learning about and taking care of our creek has been a great Science learning experience as well as a service learning project for Chimacum Middle School …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2012/12/27/fish-trapping/
I'm a Curipod Ambassador! :)
I've presented at NCCE
2016, 2017, 2019, 2022,
2023, 2024, and 2025!
I presented at WSTA 2015!
