Stimulating Science Simulations

Geography was never my thing.  It definitely shows when it comes to teaching about landforms.  I just don't get into it like I should.  Well, admitting your weakness is the first step toward overcoming it.  At least I hope it is.  This year I am trying something new.  Instead of hanging a lovely bulletin board display on the wall, it will spend some time on the floor.  That's right, the floor!  Here's the plan.

Traditionally, I have my 3rd grade students draw pictures of the moon for an entire month.  We usually do this project after learning about the phases of the moon.  This year I had a thought. 

There has been a lot of information and talk lately about "Flipping" the classroom.  At first I thought this meant using FLIP cameras in your classroom.  I suppose there is plenty of talk about that too, but this kind of Flip is different and it isn't exactly like "Flipping" a house either. So what does it mean to "flip" your classroom?

We knew this would be a fun event but we had no idea what a big hit it was really going to be. (Keep in mind that our K-5 school has just over 200 students enrolled right now.)  As we began planning for this math/science night we decided it would be a good idea to have families RSVP so we would know how much food to buy.  It was only refreshments, but we wanted to be sure no one was left out.  The very next day, we had about 40 people who had RSVP'ed.  Before we knew it we were over 100 and when it was all said and done 270 people had RSVP'ed (give or take a few).  Suddenly we weren't only nervous about the refreshments but also about the space we'd chosen to use and how many manipulatives we would need for the math activities.  Plus, this event wasn't required for teachers to attend like most PTA type nights would be.

I recently challenged my students to consider a probing question based upon a spiral "marble tower".  The probe comes from " Uncovering Student Ideas in Science Volume 3" pg. 71 .  Students are asked to evaluate what will happen to the marble as it rolls off the bottom of the tower.  They are given 5 different points of view to consider and must choose 1 to agree with and then defend their reasoning. The probes are great for determining student understanding and misconceptions.  They are even better when I am able to use them to set the stage for inquiry based learning.  After responding to the probe, I gave students 2 days (40 min/day) to design and build their own marble tower to test their theory.  We used colorful cardstock sentence strips from the dollar tree to form the tower.  Students were given scissors, masking tape, and 5 sentence strips.  Eventually students asked for more sentence strips and they were allowed 2 more per team....

The 2nd annual Education Nation Summit was recently held in NYC.  As a teacher screener for DonorsChoose. org I was offered the unique opportunity to attend the Teacher Town Hall live on MSNBC at Rockefellar Plaza.  Teachers gathered from across the nation to join in the discussion with Brian Williams.  The media is all too often filled with the voices of every stakeholder in education EXCEPT the teacher. This was a chance to have our collective teacher voice heard.  Topics such as incentive and merit based pay, drop out rates, teacher-led school innovations, and much more were the focus of the day.  You can read more about it by checking out these links. Teachers gather for Education Nation summit If you want your voice to be heard, join in with the discussion at this link. Education Nation You can also share your 60 sec. response to very specific questions at the Teacher Wall

I've had numerous experiences with whiteboards, virtual learning, online professional development, and tutoring via chat rooms.  Most tools are either expensive or have limited functionality.  Today I hosted a webinar using Scribblar.  The process couldn't have been easier.  I provided some information about myself and had a free account in minutes.  I was then able to create a virtual learning room with a custom name and generate a password that kept the room private.  Only people with the URL and password could enter.  It allowed me to add pages, upload images, use video and audio, and much more. I fumbled around a little bit, but it really wasn't difficult to generate 5 pages to share during a 2 hour webinar.  The webinar should have had about 30 people attending, but only 3 actually showed up.  The 4 of us were able to have a really in depth conversation about what is working in our science classes.  We talked about developing a s...