Mar 28
Chimacum Middle School 6th graders have been monitoring our neighborhood creek, Chimacum Creek, for the past 15 years! When asked to to develop an integrated STEM unit this year for our 6th graders I went to my fellow 6th grade teachers, the Humanities teacher, Ms. Langston, and the Math teacher, Mr. Meacham, and asked them …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2017/03/28/a-stewardship-stem-project/
Nov 21
This post was originally published on the CORELaborate WA blog here. Is the Scientific Method dead? Does the NGSS have guidelines for students as experimental designers? Before NGSS, WA State’s revised 2009 Essential Academic Learning Requirements (EALR) number 2 was the Inquiry standard for questioning and investigating. That provide a framework for how Science teachers …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/11/21/ngss-the-scientific-method/
Feb 17
What Made Standards Evil? I get it. Ever since No Child Left Behind, education reform has taken a turn for the worst. The mere mention of privatization, vouchers clouded under the guise of choice, charter schools, testing every kid, in every grade level, multiple times, and then making curriculum to prepare kids for the tests …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/02/17/are-standards-bad/
Feb 16
Standards, right?Standards have been around since way before the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Standards are a reality for classroom teachers and personally, for me, I can teach using Standards as guidelines. I trust that people smarter than me chose the standards, taking into account what kids need …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/02/16/ccss-ela-shift-1/
Feb 15
As a WA STEM PD school on year 2 of our grant work, we get to use an IrisConnect LiveView camera. What we’ve learned from WA STEM research is that WA state teachers want effective Professional Development (PD) that includes observing models of instruction, having time to practice and reflect, get peer coaching, and receive …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2016/02/15/live-coaching-pd/
Apr 06
I took my Twitter Wakelet notes from NCCE 2015 and put together all the notes from the 1:1 implementation sessions I attended. I attended as many of those sessions as I could to best help my building prepare for our 1:1 initiative for the 2016-17 school year. Next year, 2015-16, will be our planning year …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2015/04/06/my-11-ncce2015-notes/
Dec 12
This week I had all my 6th grade classes try their hand at coding and programming using the great Hour of Code resources. I could have just pointed kids to the part of the Hour Code website with all the tutorials but I decided to make myself an account and add all my 80 students …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2014/12/12/hour-of-code-week/
Mar 25
I need a fresh perspective on something I’ve been struggling with this school year. My reason for gamifying my courses was to motivate and engage more of my students whether they are gamers or not. Last week I reiterated something in blog post that I’ve learned in over 22 years of teaching, that no ONE …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2014/03/25/what-am-i-missing-here/
Dec 02
As part of our state teacher evaluation program, Teacher/Principal Evaluation Project (TPEP), we have to have our learning targets and success criteria clearly posted. Learning targets are to come from our standards, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and for Science the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Clearly posting learning targets is supposed to be …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/12/02/learning-targets/
Aug 16
[This is part of a series of posts I’m writing as I reflect on another online course I’m taking this summer, Stanford University’s EDUC115N How to Learn Math. Sure, I’m a Science teacher but I have taught Math so I’m familiar with Math instruction. Besides, we do use Math in Science so it’s not like …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/08/16/more-on-math/
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2016, 2017, 2019, 2022,
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