Jun 30
Okay I’m not a big fan of cockroaches. I grew up in Miami, FL and we had those big, flying cockroaches with the antennae that looked like human hair. My mother always screamed when she saw one so early on I picked up that fear. To this day when I see a black blur out …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/06/30/molting-roach/
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/
Jan 02
This year my Science PLC is focusing on using learning progressions. We’ve worked for years on eliciting evidence so we moved on to a new focus, namely sharing learning expectations. [Disclaimer: I’ve read some bloggers who raise some great points about sharing learning expectations and using rubrics with our students so I’d like to note …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2012/01/02/learning-about-cells/
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/
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 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/
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!
