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.
Jul 30
Live animals in Science class are great. For the past 15 years that I’ve been teaching mostly Science I’ve mainly taught Earth, Physical, and Environmental Science. Even in Environmental Science we barely worked with live animals. I did get to trap fish with students but we just caught, identified, then returned them to the creek. …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2012/07/30/live-animals-in-science/
Jul 18
We found the Mossman! He exists!! Background story: At the end of May, on our 8th grade week-long Odyssey field trip, we were taking our school bus to the Hoh Rain Forest. On the way there I saw what I could only describe as a Mossman. I told our bus driver and on the way …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2012/07/18/mossman-found/
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2012/07/16/gamifying-my-classes/
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2012/07/15/my-two-cents-on-standards/
Jul 04
This was cross posted from the WA STEM Blog: Our program to have teachers use social networking to connect and learn from each other continued early this summer. We added six teachers to our mix and gave them a short, two-day immersion into the world of blogging and tweeting to connect to learn. Here’s a …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2012/07/04/social-networking-for-pd/
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2012/06/18/when-is-extrinsic-motivation-okay/
Jun 17
I have this vision of something I’d like to do at the start of each class. I usually start by talking. I remind kids what we’re doing, where they left off the day before, and what the agenda or goals are for the current time period. I find this useful because my students only have …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2012/06/17/looking-for-ideas/
Jun 11
I’m looking for some feedback for this school year. What am I doing well? Where could I improve? I’d love to hear from my students’ families. You can take the survey by clicking on the following link: http://goo.gl/WpJ1n Thank you!
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2012/06/11/2011-12-parent-survey/
Jun 11
This past Thursday Nicholas Provenzano hosted a Twitter chat at #NerdyChat on the topic of Gamification (see transcript here). Gamification is the idea of using the best of video gaming in the classroom. Why? Watch a kid play a video game. Video games hook the player and motivate the player to persevere through failure and …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2012/06/11/alternate-reality-game/
Jun 04
We talk a lot about preparing our students for real life. We entice them with the reward of high marks (A’s, 100%’s, 3’s and 4’s) and we threaten them with failure (F’s, 0’s, 1’s and 2’s). It’s easy to think that enticing kids with high marks works because of the kids who work hard for …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2012/06/04/real-life/
I'm a Curipod Ambassador! :)
I've presented at NCCE
2016, 2017, 2019, 2022,
2023, 2024, and 2025!
I presented at WSTA 2015!
