The past summer provided me with a little time and space to read. I wasn’t working any Jumpstarts, maintaining a farm, attending professional development for new “initiatives” at my school, or, thank God, moving across the country. So what did I read? These books*.
Science, Education, and Science Education
classroom applicationsI tweeted a few weeks ago, mentioning my frustration that a well known site on which you can save your favorite images had become nothing more than a re-direct to a site on which teachers sell their work. A number of other teachers jumped into the conversation, offering up the websites on which their own work could be downloaded for free. Many items are editable. All that is asked is that you follow their Creative Commons or other copyright requests.
On the sites below, you won’t find un-editable but cute worksheets that can be easily used as filler. You won’t find un-editable cut-and-paste scrapbooking-type activities that usually generate an attractive product with little likelihood of students engaging in any depth. You WILL find the best work of accomplished, practicing classroom teachers who continually update their lessons.
UPDATED 5/16/2020
Yup. We are back in Ohio, after almost 13 years in Washington and then Oregon.
It all happened rather fast. Skyrocketing real estate prices made it a good time to sell the farm. Administrative changes in my district left me feeling stifled and restless. The Husband easily made a few business moves, made possible because he works from his phone. He bought us a new home in Ohio without my even visiting it. We packed more stuff than 2 people should own. The Husband supervised the movers as they toted it all across the country and he drove the dogs and cat. (Moral of that story: Never purchase something you can’t eat. Except dogs and cats.)
It’s only partly true that I’ve never been here before. We lived in the nearby town for 27 years. We raised our kids here, and they’ve stayed. I knew where the house was but had been inside only through photos and videos. A well-respected local builder built the home for his wife, so construction is topnotch.
I’m considering career options at this point. I’ve turned down 2 offers that were not me, and received one letter of rejection (with typos.) In the meantime, I have some updates to make here – so many posts in draft form – and on the website.
It was time to come home.
New House
This is the fifth in a series of blog posts summarizing my reflections on what it means to provide learning opportunities for every student, every day. Find the series here, at #AllMeansAll
A slim majority of my physical science students are Caucasian. The rest declare their heritage as Hispanic, African American, Pacific Islander, Native American, No matter their background, they have a few things in common: most don’t read. Most don’t write, at least not more than text messages. And most can’t verbalize the importance of school. They just don’t know. I recently took a closer look at the achievement gap in these 2 classes, and looked at the stories behind the data (I’ve done this before.) I was very, very uncomfortable with what I learned.
This is the fourth in a series of blog posts summarizing my reflections on what it means to provide learning opportunities for every student, every day. #AllMeansAll
At the beginning of each year, I send a safety contract home with my students to sign with their parents. There’s also a place for parent and student to sign that they read and understand the course information and syllabus. The truly important questions, though, are on the other side of the paper.
Yes, I want to know what parents expect for their child in my class. While this survey is far from scientific, every year the answers I receive cause me to reconsider how I communicate with students and parents. Here, in general terms to protect privacy, is a summary of some of the most common comments from parents explaining what they want for their kids. Some comments are not at all surprising. Some comments, however, make me step back and think.
Parents want me to:
- be enthusiastic about our learning.
- be a really great teacher.
- know if their child will learn to work with chemicals safely.
- treat their children courteously and with respect.
- know their children are kind, funny, clever, interesting, talented, intelligent, hard-working, conscientious, scared, stressed, anxious, are quick learners, struggle with math, are gifted artists and writers and musicians.
- be available for any help their child might need with understanding concepts or learning skills.They want me to know their child doesn’t always like to ask for help.
- communicate with them if there are any issues with their children, be they behavioral or academic – assignments missing, failing grades. They want to hear from me if they call or email.
- actually teach the class and not just hand out papers and expect students to understand.
- know they can’t help with chemistry homework.
- provide career guidance and prepare their children for college.
- give help, when their child needs it.
Parents want their children to:
- be challenged appropriately.
- enjoy science and learning.
- “just please pass this class.”
- be able to ask questions and get answers delivered in a way that doesn’t make their child feel like an idiot.
- be challenged.
- be given clear expectations
Parents want to know what they can do to help their children be successful.
Most of all, each parent wants me to know his/her child; to know that Rosa loves her dogs more than anything; that Abby is on the state equestrian team and is a horse whisperer; that John needs frequent check-ins for understanding, that Katie lost her glasses and won’t be able to get a new pair for 3 weeks; that Zach is having surgery in October and will miss at least a week, that Mindy has anxiety attacks before tests but does just fine if I offer some reassurance beforehand that I know she can do well; that Jose wants to be a physicist and will take AP Chemistry and physics both next year; and that Roger wants to take over his grandfather’s machine shop after graduation.
There are very few surprise responses. Parents do ask questions, and they expect answers.
How am I changed by knowing all this? Students love knowing that I know a bit about them when I plan our work together. I can better craft physical and emotional learning environments that meet all students’ needs. I know student seating preferences, who is reserved about speaking out, who doesn’t read aloud in class, There’s something positive to talk about when I call home.
What do you do to better know your students?
This is the third in a series of blog posts summarizing my reflections on what it means to provide learning opportunities for every student, every day. Find the series here, at #AllMeansAll
Disclaimer: I’ve read a good deal of literature and opinion around the validity of learning styles. Nonetheless, at the encouragement of a colleague (this colleague) during some collaborative course design work, I pulled out the learning styles inventory* again this year, in Physical Science classes. The intent was to use the data gathered to introduce graphing, and that was a win. The colleague suggested we share with students WHY we are interested in their learning styles. We are interested so that we can be sure to make learning available to all students in the modality each student best learns. We discussed this in both classes. The real win, though, was what I learned about my students, and what they learned about themselves.
This is the second in a series of blog posts summarizing my reflections on what it means to provide learning opportunities for every student, every day. Find the series here, at #AllMeansAll
Created during Champions of STEM work with BSCS, who probably own the copyright. If asked, I will remove the image.
On the first day in Physical Science, we got into teams and built paper towers as an engineering design challenge. Our process followed the outlined by a group of district STEM teachers working together last school year.
The challenge was simple: Build the tallest tower you can with 4 sheets of 8.5 x 11: paper.
First, a little history on this class:
This is the first in a series of blog posts summarizing my reflections on what it means to provide learning opportunities for every student, every day. Find the series here, at #AllMeansAll
This year, my district has adopted a motto.
All means ALL.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this……
Are you an instructional coach? If so, have you encountered teachers who don’t think they need your services? You know, that old, cranky teacher whom you assume pulls out the same copy of a lesson plan each year because they’ve “always done it this way;” the teacher who doesn’t jump at every new app or piece of hardware, the teacher who eyerolls when new methods are introduced with more excitement than practice? Before you make assumptions about why that teacher is resistant, here are some questions, in no particular order, you might want to be ready to answer before you walk into this teacher’s classroom:
It’s no secret that I have scorned the term “professional development” and the acronym for years. I love learning about science, nature, how the world works, how we learn, my craft, food, people, many things. I love talking with other teachers about our practice. It’s not the learning I resist, it’s the failed attempts to “develop” skills in professionals with no acknowledgement of what or how professionals prefer to learn.
Again this summer, I had the opportunity to take part in some genuine learning with groups of accomplished teachers. Each time, our work together took place over 3-4 days. The leaders were not administrators, or university professors, or edu-experts who are no longer in the classroom, or techno-geeks with apps or gizmos purported to make learning happen. They were all simply incredibly accomplished classroom teachers.
Something truly wonderful happens when accomplished teachers are leaders of professional learning. The very skills that are the foundation of their classroom awesomeness drive their work with other teacher-learners. There is no sit-n-git. No one leaves with the feeling that they are to “do as I say but not as I did.” There is no time for participant web-surfing or Facebooking. No time for phone games. Everyone is engaged and learning because they are doing the learning, not listening to the leaning. Every teacher makes meaning of and owns the leaning. And when teachers return to their classrooms, they will certainly implement their work in their own classrooms.
Here’s a partial list of the engaging strategies we used during our work together. If you are a teacher, you’ll probably recognize some of them.
Lately…..
- Learning Anatomy through Collaboration, Part 4
- Learning Anatomy Through Collaboration, Part 3
- Learning Anatomy through Collaboration, Part 2
- Learning Anatomy through Collaboration, Part 1
- End of Year Science Scavenger Hunts
- Everything’s Changed
- COVID-19 Data Sites
- Document Handling from a Phone or Chromebook
- Collecting Student Work in Google Drive – KISS
- Projecting from a Tablet, specifically an iPad
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Chemistry Educators
- A Digital Life – Phil Cook
- A future chemistry educator – Justin Aitken
- Adrian Dingle's Chemistry Blog
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- Chemistry is Messy – Cory Kilbane
- Life is More than Theory – Ann Gardner
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- Reflections Of A Science Teacher – Sandra Goodrich – Chemistry and Marine Biology
- TEACHING|chemistry – Elena Bethea
- The Chemist's Classroom – Jason Olson
- Thomson Science
Educators I Value
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- Science Teacher – Michael Doyle
- Starr Sackstein
- Stories From School: Practice meets Policy
- Strickland Science – Gary Strickland
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Middle School Science
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Disclaimer
Anything posted here is my own opinion and does not reflect the position of my employer, any university affiliations, Twitter, NBPTS, Facebook, my husband, my dogs, and certainly not my cat. Clicking on links to books may take you to an Amazon link from which I receive a few pennies without increasing your cost.
~ Luann Lee
This work by Luann Christensen Lee is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work by Luann Christensen Lee is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License