Secondary Giveaway!

I am just so excited! I am participating in my first giveaway! I have offered up my product "If You Were The Ecologist" as part of a bundle of high school resources. There is also a giveaway specifically for middle school teachers going on at the same time!

Click on the picture above, it will take you over to the Teaching High School Math blog. From there you can decide to enter the high school, middle school, or both if that applies to you. There is a fantastic list of sellers who have donated to both giveaways! These are not math/science specific giveaways - there are resources for all different topics included in the bundles so there really is something that everyone would be interested it! Plus the middle school package includes a Starbucks gift card and the high school package includes a TpT gift card!

Good luck to all who enter. You have until Janary 17th to get your entries in!

New Classes Soon - Looking Forward and Reflecting

This week is my last full week with my first semester classes. Next week we have finals and then the following week semester two classes start up. With these new classes so close I have spent quite a bit of time the last week or so thinking about what is coming up - yet I am still feeling very unprepared at this point. I want to share what I have coming up, what some of my plans are, and what my concerns are. Please feel free to share ideas with me!

Students in Research: BRAND NEW CLASS for me...it has been taught at my school in the past by other teachers but has not been taught in a number of years. I am still working on rewording the class description and syllabus for this one. Basically the plan is that during the first few weeks of the class I will lead the students through activities that will introduce them to basic experiment planning techniques. After my introductory activities students are going to be designing and carrying out their own individual or small group experiments - much like an independent study. Their midterm and final will each be formal lab reports. I am most nervous for this because it is brand new and I am not sure how motivated the group of students I have coming in are going to be.

Biology: This is my comfort zone! I taught two sections of biology this semester and will have one section of bio during the second semester. The group coming in is "College Prep" level and hopefully are ready for a challenge. While I will probably modify a few activities I did during this semester there wont be any major changes to the class.

Physics: I have a very small group of students coming into physics (which is normal). Past years I have had anywhere from 1-10 students in physics but the normal is 3 or 4....crazy right! The students coming in are all very bright and are concurrently taking a college level calculus class so I am confident in their math skills. The challenge for me is that I have yet to really have a curriculum for physics that I am happy with. Each year it ends up changing in some way. Last year ran much like an independent study with just two students in the class. This year I am anticipating a similar format but I want to make it more interactive and hold the students more accountable for the information. I need to add lab activities that are meaningful and more real life applications. I also want to use interactive science notebooks with the group which I have not done in physics in the past but after my modest success with this in biology and chemistry I want to continue and see how it goes with physics.

When I began teaching I honestly thought that by year 5 things would be SO much easier. In some way things are - I have a bag of tricks that I can reach into and grab a lesson out of if I need to change something on the fly. I know the students and am much more comfortable managing my classroom. Yet I am still constantly reworking and changing my classes - I am never quite satisfied. Sometimes this leads me to success (like with the ISN this year) and sometimes it leads me to failure (two chemistry labs this year did not work out at all the way I had hoped and I wont be doing them next year!) I also find that sometimes I take off more than I can chew and after a few weeks call off some new effort (my element of the week bulletin board - carbon has been the element of the week for about 2 months) when I realize that I don't have time to do everything that I would like to. Maybe by year 10 things will finally be SO much easier!

January Currently

I  love the beginning of the month. I NEVER manage to complete the new Currently on the first of the month, but this month I am actually a bit ahead of my usual. So here it is...

Listening - You will notice a theme as I go through these. It has been very cold here in Northern New Hampshire so far this winter. We have already had a couple of nights that hit -20 F. This week we have been stuck in single digits or negative numbers. Paying for heating oil is so expensive when we have weeks like this so not only am I hearing the furnace kick on constantly but each time it does I also hear the sound of money leaving my bank account.

Loving - The new fleece I got for Christmas is getting well used already. With it so cold I wore it under my jacket today and have kept it on in the house. (Dressing in layers means I can keep the thermostat a bit lower and still be comfortable).

Thinking - I am all about organization right now! I am trying to figure out how to better keep track of stats for TpT, including how much I blog or Pin products. I am also trying to figure out a way to track monthly goals (I think I may have found a calendar to help me with that). Now to just get me next semester classes organized and I will be all set!

Wanting - Well between the time that I typed and saved the Currently picture and now I have fulfilled that one! Hubby got home a bit later because he had to make an extra stop on the way home and then had to wait for the person he needed to see. But it was worth the wait as he decided that we should just go order some food since I hadn't really started cooking yet.

Needing - Summer, see all the previous complaints about cold weather.

Memory/Tradition - Each year we do a Christmas stocking for our dog. She knew her stocking was hanging up, I think she could smell the treats. So when we got our stockings down she was very eager to try to help unpack them. It was very cute! Her stocking was last and she was not very patient. Now she is sitting on the couch just staring at one of her new toys that was in her stocking like she is waiting for someone to come pick it up and play with her.

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all have a warm and happy January!

New Year's Goals and Sale

I have taken a bit of a hiatus from blogging - right before the holidays was just so busy at school and the holidays are always busy with family. Today while I am waiting for laundry I decided it was time to get back down to business. With vacation almost over I am starting to get back into school mode.

First off I want to share some goals for the upcoming year - I guess teaching goals wasn't the best title since two of my goals are business related...but you all get the idea.

• Goal 1: UbD unit
• As some of you might remember from an earlier post our school has taken on a huge Understanding by Design initiative this year. We have been reading and discussing since September. In January we are set to begin writing our units which we are supposed to pilot in the spring. I am both excited to learn these skills and intimidated by the amount of work these units will be taking.
• Goal 2: Increase products on TpT
• I currently have 23 products (paid and free) on my store. I am hoping to both edit and improve existing product and to nearly double this number over the next year.
• Goal 3: Blogging and Marketing
• I am hoping to blog at least once per week and to vary between sharing about products and blogging about my teaching experiences. I find that often it is easy for me to blog when I post a new product but I don't want my blog to just be advertisement for products. I also want to share my insight into the world of education.
• Goal 4: Improve performance assessments and inquiry tasks
• This is sort of tied with the UbD efforts but has always been a constant goal for my classes. I am trying to push all of my classes towards being more student driven and goal oriented. One of the things that I having been working on this year is developing better and more frequent assessments for students to demonstrate their understanding. 

 Finally, even though I said I want to expand my blog to not just be about promoting my store I am going to do a bit of shameless promoting....

 

To ring in the new year I am hosting a two day SALE on all products in my store. The sale runs today December 31, 2013 through tomorrow January 1, 2014. I know I am doing some shopping today as I prepare to return to school so I wanted to offer everyone an opportunity to do so with a bit of a discount. Click the banner below to follow it to my store and take advantage of this limited time sale.
 

 

 

 

Secondary Sunday linky

Ok so I just realized that I typed this and apparently only saved it as a draft and did not actually post. SO, I am a bit late getting this up but....


This week I was so excited to come across a Linky specifically for secondary teachers. So many of the things I participate it are geared toward elementary and middle school that I don't know how much it really helps me...but they are usually fun and a good way to connect with new people so I do them anyways. I am looking forward to getting to participate in this in the future and hope that I can connect with some awesome secondary teachers.

Anyways, click on the picture below to head over to the Secondary Sunday Linky where you will find some awesome ideas shared by secondary teachers in all different subjects.

ISN success with genetics

This week has been very productive for using our interactive science notebooks.  I purchased a bunch of products during the TpT Cyber Monday and Tuesday sale and decided to make a change to my punnett square lesson after I had downloaded my new stuff. Using an accordion fold template from Mad Science Lessons,  (TpT store here) I turned my usual "Punnett Squares 101" lesson into a booklet that students would create and attach to their ISN. Students used 4 sheets of the large diamond shape accordion template to create enough pages for the booklets. The picture below shows the template page and the completed accordion.

First students cut out, assembled, and folded the booklets. Next I gave them a copy of the 7 steps to making a Punnett square, the cut the steps apart and glued one step to every other page.

The remaining pages the students filled in with an example as we followed the steps to solve a basic mono-hybrid cross. There finished products looked something like the one below - sorry you can't see much of the detail.

 

 

I think that this strategy worked really well. The students were more engaged in taking the notes because in their words "they didn't feel like notes"...but they got the same exact content and examples they would have if we had done my usual notes on this. The other benefit is that in this format they can flip step by step as they are working on a problem and just unfold the step they need to work on. For the students that have trouble focusing with a lot of information on the page this helps them isolate each step as they do them. After finishing the books students did a set of 4 practice problems that were very detailed and guided. They generally did well and most of the errors were just because those individuals didn't slow down and read the whole problem before they started working.

 

We are now working through my Martian Genetics Simulation (which is on TpT if you click on the picture below). This is a very time consuming activity but something the students always enjoy. It really drives home the difference between phenotype and genotype and heterozygous and homozygous. Plus is sets us up to talk about how traits are passed in families over time or with a simple extension activity we can branch off into natural selection. So far this week we have determined the genetics for our parent generation, drawn the parent martians, determined possible gametes from the parents and randomly selected partners for reproduction, and today we used those partners to determine the genotype and phenotype of our F1 generation. As I have been working through the activity this time I have come up with lots of ideas for improvements and expansions....I probably wont have time to do that until Christmas break but if I make big additions the price will go up some so if you are interested buy now and you will end up getting the updates for FREE!

 



Currently December

It is time for the December issue of Currently! As always I am a bit late linking up but not as late as usual. So here we go...

LISTENING: I can't function without music or noise in the background. I always have either the TV on or music playing on the computer when I am working, cleaning, cooking, even reading. So ever since I was cleaning the house up for Thanksgiving I have been listening to Christmas music. Some days this if from iTunes where I have the "Straight No Chaser" a Capella Christmas album and more than my fair share of Trans Siberian Orchestra. I also love my Pandora account and have at least 3 Christmas stations on there....yeah I'm kinda sorta a Christmas music fanatic. 

LOVING: Well, let's just stick to this Christmas theme. I put in and decorated my Christmas tree this weekend. It's a bit early but last year it was Christmas Eve before I had time to decorate and that was a real bummer. this year I am not taking any chances so I did it while I had the time. And as you may have guesses I listened to Christmas music while decorating!

THINKING: gah I am so behind on grading. I did so well the first part of the school year with keeping up. Right now I am a couple of days behind and grades close on Friday. This weekend is going to be grading palooza at my house. Maybe I should blog less and grade more....

WANTING: I have been very frustrated for basically the last two years about not being able to be back in school. I had everything in the works to start my Masters this summer but my financial aid fell through and I still have started. I want so badly to be starting this, my plan was always to teach for three years and then start my masters.

NEEDING: I think last night MAYBE was the end of this. The pie was gone within a day or two. The end of the turkey was finished off over the weekend. The salad is officially wilted and what is left will be bunny food tonight. I still have crackers and cheese, two cans of unopened cranberry sauce, and pickles galore!

FAVORITE CHRISTMAS TRADITION: My husband is the youngest of 5 kids. All of them are married and all except for us have 2 or more children. Most years at least 4 of the 5 siblings land at his parents house for Christmas and whenever possible all of them are there with their families. It gets very hectic with 12 + adults and 11 children, not to mention whoever for cousins that may pop in. I LOVE IT! We do a big secret Santa exchange where each child has a cousin to get a gift for and each sibling/spouse has another adult to buy for. We all gather in the living room and one by one open gifts and try to guess who was our Santa. It's so much fun and such great time spent with family!