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.
Mar 03
Last week our 8th grade Bacteria Labs went all wrong. Student teams went all around the school swabbing different places to see where they would find the most bacteria. What happened was something I didn’t expect, not one single petri dish showed any growth. No bacteria, no mold, nothing. We discussed possible sources of error …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2011/03/03/lab-saved/
Feb 25
Back in November I was reflecting on whether or not inquiry can be, or should be, structured. Overall my conclusion was that yes, it can and should, at times, be structured by the teacher. Even with my 8th graders I find that if I don’t structure the activity, project, or lab they don’t take it …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2011/02/25/when-is-structure-needed/
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2011/02/25/quick-inquiry-field-trip/
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2011/02/10/we-are-the-change-we-need/
Feb 06
I’m looking for help from my incredible PLN. My district’s tech committee has been meeting this year and we’re looking to revamp our technology vision and mission. One thing that has come up at these tech meetings is that before we can decide what direction to take with tech we need to define how we …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2011/02/06/what-does-good-teaching-look-like/
Jan 31
My students are using two fantastic apps for uploading photos and pictures from their iPads to put on their blogs. If a student gets a photo on their iPad or draws a picture here are two apps for them to upload: The Photobucket app is fantastic! It’s free and creating accounts are free. Students just …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2011/01/31/uploading-photos-with-the-ipad/
Jan 28
Even after almost convincing my 8th graders that air had no mass I still moved them forward and hope that they remember all the different gasses that make up our air and how each gas has an atomic weight, which would lead to the reasonable connection that air does have mass. It is, after all, …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2011/01/28/whiteboarding-in-science/
Jan 28
Back in mid-November I wrote about how my students were using technology as tool in reference to the addition of iPads into my classroom. I was able to purchase 12 iPads with funds from Learn & Serve America. My 6th graders have been studying the water quality of our neighborhood creek, Chimacum Creek, for over …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2011/01/28/6th-grade-water-quality/
Jan 22
My Science PLC has a few concepts that we have been reviewing with our students in grades 6 – 12 for the past few years. One of those concepts was brought to us by one of our high school teachers because she noticed that her students were having difficulty with conceiving of air as having …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2011/01/22/sometimes-science-lessons-just-go-wrong/
Jan 21
What if you had the chance to speak to your state’s legislators and help them understand some of the finer points of why high stakes standardized testing, especially when your state doesn’t even have a handle on which test are aligned to which set of standards, just isn’t a good idea? Well, one of our …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2011/01/21/making-a-case-against-high-stakes-testing/
I'm a Curipod Ambassador! :)
I've presented at NCCE
2016, 2017, 2019, 2022,
2023 and 2024!
