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.
Dec 18
My awesome PLC has accepted the challenge of social networking. I shared the WA STEM grant idea and they all jumped on board. So I wrote a proposal and sent it in! I sure hope we get the grant because I think it’s a great project for us to work on. (If you want to …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/12/18/wa-stem-grant-proposal/
Dec 18
It’s nice to celebrate the small successes, it keeps us sane. 🙂 In my post about microorganisms I shared some of, what I thought, were wonderful critters. A bunch of students in both of my 8th grade classes were right there with me, finding great critters, identifying them and drawing them. Maybe it was because …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/12/18/small-successes/
Dec 13
So last Thursday I got a call from the project director of the North Cascades and Olympic Science Partnership (NCOSP), Dr. Carolyn Landel. I was fortunate enough to be able to participate in the NCOSP trainings and summer academies from 2004 to 2007. It was an incredible boost to my learning about Science and how …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/12/13/social-networking-opportunity/
Dec 12
This year in 8th grade Life Science we started a unit on diversity of life by learning what it means to be considered a living thing. One criterion for organisms to be considered living that students came up with was made of cells. So we’ve been looking for microorganisms. We collected samples of water from …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/12/12/finding-microorganisms/
Dec 06
We read another excellent article at my teacher leader training, Next-Generation Assessment Systems: Are We Losing an Opportunity? by Margaret Heritage (this one is a pdf file). One thing I took away from the article is how easy it is to think we’re doing formative assessment when we’re not because of the word assessment. After …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/12/06/formative-process/
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/12/06/inquiry-for-teachers/
Dec 04
As I continue to learn more about Assessment for Learning (AfL) I find ways to hone my craft. One of the five key strategies of AfL is to share learning expectations with students. I’ve used rubrics on and off for years not sure if I like the transparency of them or hate how they don’t …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/12/04/sharing-learning-expectations/
Nov 29
Short answer, yes. There is a time and a place for everything. And even with inquiry there is a time and place for structure. I think learning a structure like the one in this blog is great for elementary teachers who teach Science. Is this the only way? No. Should you do this all the …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/11/29/can-inquiry-be-structured/
Nov 27
I’ve used Google Forms to create surveys for my students. I’ve gotten some great feedback from students at the end of course. It was easy to create and I got a spreadsheet with all their feedback. I could read through all the student responses. I never used Google Forms for quizzes but finally decided to …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/11/27/feedback-with-google-forms/
Nov 23
Science kits are great for elementary and many middle school teachers. I’m a generalist (got the early adolescent generalist national board certification before it went away), which basically means I dabble in everything, so the fact that I’m teaching only Science is through some fortunate circumstance. I saw fortunate because I love teaching Science and …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/11/23/extend-the-lesson-for-inquiry/
I'm a Curipod Ambassador! :)
I've presented at NCCE
2016, 2017, 2019, 2022,
2023, 2024, and 2025!
I presented at WSTA 2015!
