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 10
Assessment is the latest educational buzz topic. As is customary in a profession in order to become proficient at something we must take it out of the realm of hit or miss and become mindful of what we do so that we can put into effect what needs to be done when it needs to …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/07/10/assessment_for_learning/
Jun 30
[See iPads in Science 2 to see what I learned a year later.] I am very fortunate. Of the 19 years I’ve been teaching I’ve gotten at least one grant for 12 of those years; 10 of them have been the last 10 consecutive years. Four years ago I received a couple of Best Buy …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/06/30/ipads-in-science/
Jun 30
This year I taught three 6th grade Science classes, which means I had all 90 of my middle school’s 6th graders, and two 7/8 mixed Earth Science classes. Being able to teach 7th and 8th grade Science is wonderful because that means that I get to have some of my former 6th grade students again! …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/06/30/reflections-of-2009-10/
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/05/16/15-things-about-the-human-body/
May 15
Dan Pink has some great research to share on motivation. Dan is a great speaker and his talks verify what Alfie Kohn has been writing about for years (here’s another great blog post on the problems with rewards: Classroom Leadership: Rewards Are Like Crack). This youtube video is pretty fascinating to watch as this incredible …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/05/15/dan-pink-on-motivation/
May 15
I was reading Larry Ferlazzo’s post on standardized testing and I thought I’d share it here. He asked his students to let him know their impressions of the test and I must say their feedback is very telling. We all know that one size fits all testing is not an effective way to measure what …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/05/15/standardized-tests/
May 13
We are almost ready for our week-long field trip to gorgeous Lake Crescent for the 8th grade Olympic Odyssey! In case your child has lost or misplaced some of the most recent paperwork here is a link to a copy of the packing list: Odyssey2010FinalRemindLetter And here is a link to the Final Reminder letter …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/05/13/odssey-2010/
May 03
Progress reports are ready so visit this page in case your child didn’t bring home the paper copy I handed out. Students have been learning some great Science and they haven’t had to worry about grades, passing or flunking. Let me know what you think. If you haven’t had a chance yet, take the short …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/05/03/last-midterm-of-09-10/
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/05/03/learn-about-advertising/
Apr 07
I found this blog post by a teacher who is also trying to find ways to assess students better than traditional grading. This teacher from Alberta, Canada, has been blogging about topics such as grading and student assessment for a while now. Here are a collection of his blogs on these subjects. Etta Kralovec on …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/04/07/my-recent-readings/
I'm a Curipod Ambassador! :)
I've presented at NCCE
2016, 2017, 2019, 2022,
2023, 2024, and 2025!
I presented at WSTA 2015!
