Halloween Sale!

Be sure to check out my store this week! All of my products, including the newly posted assessment packs are 10% from October 29 - November 1, 2013. Happy Halloween and Happy Shopping!

Assessment Palooza

Assessment has been my focus so far this school year. I have been working to develop both new formative assessment tools and different types of authentic assessments to use at the end of units rather than the standard tests. So far I have greatly improved two of my biology units and gathered all of my assessment tools into packages for each unit.

First -  Cell Structure and Function package which I posted yesterday after some fine tuning. Contains writing prompts, quick quizzes, and project ideas dealing with organelles, cell function, membrane structure. These activities are ready to be printed and used in the classroom. I used the included objectives list to keep track of which objectives I had assessed and how students were progressing.

Second - The Cell Division package includes similar materials focusing around the cell cycle, mitosis, cancer, and bonus activities dealing with stem cell research. My mitosis 4x4 puzzle and mitosis card sort activities have been my biggest sellers so I am really excited to be adding to my collection of cell division resources.

I have been assessing student understanding at least every other day in some way and hope to continue doing so. These aren't usually formal quizzes or tests and often I don't actually call them an assessment to the students. They are activities or review for them but provide valuable information to me to determine if students really got what I though they did out of the previous lessons. I am finding that by keeping track of which objectives I am assessing and how individual students performed on those objectives I am better able to adjust my teaching to meet the needs of a vary diverse group of students.

We have just started our big ecology unit which has a huge focus on stream ecology. I hope to work on developing many assessments to go along with this as well. My text book has a lot of ecology chapters but they are all very vague and general so I use a lot of outside resources for this unit. However, it has always been one of the last units I taught and has ended up being rather weak in my opinion. This year I have moved the unit up so that I have the time to give it the attention it deserves and can improve it so much. Hopefully in a few weeks I will have another collection of assessment tools to post for that unit.

Interactive Science Notebooks Two Ways

I am really excited to be successfully starting out the school year using science notebooks for both chemistry and biology. The two are slightly different in format and use, but both seem to be working well. With this post I want to give you an overview of what I am doing with these notebooks, eventually I will try to post some of the specific activities we have done in them and some pictures of how we have set up the books. .

Set-Up for both classes:

• 100 page composition notebooks
• Table of contents in the beginning
• Pages must be numbered and dated
• Resource pages for the front: grading policy, FAQ's, notebook requirements
• Envelopes attached to front and back cover to make pockets for things like vocabulary cards, homework papers, etc.
• Long ribbon attached to back cover to be used as a bookmark.
• Students can glue or tape materials onto pages
• I am not trying to do the left/right input/output system. Often my notes take two pages anyways or when students are writing things they take up different amounts of space based on handwriting, so I don't find for me that this system works well.

What goes in the biology notebooks:

• Daily objectives and catalyst pages are attached and written on each day. These are being attached because many of my group have a bad habit of loosing these two documents mid-week.
• Notes handouts that I have printed with the paper horizontally so that it can be cut in half and attached. Most notes are fill-in style for my current level class.
• Lab planning, observations, sketches
• "processing" activities such as foldables, vocab sorts, concept maps, short writing prompts etc. Some of these will be done as a whole group others students will have choice on.
• Weekly class reflections - usually wide open prompts that require students to reflect on the activities and their own personal learning experiences for the week.

What goes in the chemistry notebooks:

• Notes handouts, labs, activities, writing prompts (many of the same things as biology)
• HOMEWORK practice problems - if they do it out of the text book it goes in the notebook. I am not collecting these assignments this year. Instead we go over the homework each morning and students are encouraged to correct their work if needed. Then about once a week we do a notebook check quiz which are open notebook. Some of the questions require them to synthesize or apply information from the week. Other questions simply ask them to copy the answer from a particular problem, this allows me to know who not only did their homework but who was paying attention and corrected mistakes when the problems were gone over. This is a mature and motivated group and they seem to be responding well to this system.

I am sure as the semester goes on I will find new things to put in their notebooks. My biggest concern right now is that my biology class is putting in so many things that we may run out of room before the end of the semester.

First Days of School

The last 5 days have been a whirlwind! School started last Wednesday so we have had 5 full days of class so far. Things are going well, I have gotten through all of the required lab safety activities and we are now in full swing with the curriculum.

For chemistry we are working on our properties of matter, this is a quick unit as a lot of it does end up being review. However, I have lots of fun lab activities for this including "Why does Popcorn Pop" and the "Viscosity Challenge". Eventually I might get those activities worked up for TpT. So far those are going really well and I am excited to keep working with this group of students.

In both sections of biology we did a quick study of the properties of living things and are pushing forward into cellular structure and function. I just bought 'Cell Organelles Mix & Match Game' on TpT that I am really excited to use. I also do the celery challenge during this unit, you can get some more details about that here. Since there is a lot, and I men A LOT, of vocabulary with this unit students are also plugging away on their vocabulary cards. Right now they have been getting a few cards done at the end of classes or if they happen to finish an assignment early. Hopefully these will get done by the end of the week so that next week we can use them for some review type activities.

My final note is that I have been pushing forward with using interactive science notebooks this year with both chemistry and biology. So far it is going well and I will be doing a full post about that soon!

Back to School ----aahhhhhh!!!!

It is very hard to believe that next week we go back to school. Where did the summer go??

My blogging has been nonexistent and I feel terrible that I have neglected this part of my life for the past couple of months. Today I have happily been updating my TpT store with a couple of new products I have been working on over the summer. I am really excited to get back to school even though I don't feel like summer has been long enough. My to-do list did not get nearly enough crossed off from it yet, but I still feel like the plans I have for my classes are going to make for a great year.

On this years plans for new or significantly revised things...

• A bulletin board in my room to post assignments so that students who are absent can pick them up.
• Improved interactive notebooks for biology. Lots of new handouts, improved grading, better organization. We are going to rock science notebooks this year!
• Homework notebook for chemistry for review problems and I will be doing a weekly notebook "quiz". I am hoping this will help me cut down on the number of assignments I have to collect each week but still provide the needed motivation to complete practice problems.
• More chemistry labs - YAY! I got a huge chemical order in over the summer so some of my supply issues have been resolved!
• One of the things that I will be continuing to use is my daily catalyst and I have lots of new questions to use this year including some updated power point versions. Check those out on TpT - I posted 6 weeks worth of daily catalysts, in editable power point format. These work great with the FREE catalyst forms that students record a whole week of answers on!
• My awesome owl theme! Using lots of free clipart I found on TpT and fall décor that I found at a 50% off sale!
• Finally, as both a classroom management tool and extra credit opportunity I created a "Things to Do When I Finish Early" menu. Students will all have a copy of the chart and if they finish an assignment or task early and don't owe any make-up work they can complete one of the tasks for extra credit points. The idea here is that the tasks will keep students focused on science and occupied rather than sitting and waiting and potentially causing interruptions for students who are still working. This can also be found on TpT by following the link above.
• I also have started my own Teacher Binder where I have organized my calendar, to-do lists, class lists, IEP's, curriculum, meeting notes, etc. Each has its own tab and section. Yay for starting out super organized!

The first few weeks of school promise to be very busy and I hope that I can make all of my ideas and plans work. One thing that will help is that I only have two classes to prep for this semester (2 sections of biology, and 1 section of chemistry). Compared to previous years when I have had 3 or 4 different classes to prep, this should be a breeze!

Martian Genetics

I will probably never get around to posting about all the fantastic things that went on in my classroom at the end of the school year. However, as I am updating some files, reworking plans, and uploading a few new things to TpT I wanted to take some time to share about a few things.

Sooo, todays flashback - Martian Genetics!

Teaching genetics is one of my favorite units! I happen to LOVE doing punnet squares and probability, which probably makes me one of the few people who think that way. I have yet to find a student who is quite as excited about genetics as I am but I am hoping that some day it will happen. One of the activities that students have always really enjoyed regardless of how much they have liked or disliked genetics is my "Martian Genetics" activity. This is spin off of the classic Make-a-baby lab where you use coins to flip for traits. I walk students through 3 or more generations of Martians. Students determine their geneotype and phenotype and draw each martian using templates and lots of color. After each generation is created mating season occurs so that the next generation can come along. At the end of the activity students analyze the traits over time and look for patterns. To expand upon this and tie into the following unit on natural selection I will often end with creating a generation or two after some sort of natural disaster that impacts the population. This makes the analysis of population genetics over time much more interesting. The activity is wrapped up with a set of review questions. Throughtout the activity there is alot of discussion about dominance and recessiveness, incomplete dominance, co-dominance, meiosis, independent assortment, etc. I find it is a great review activity! Since it is a bit long I usually will split the activity into two or three sessions - since I work on block scheduling with 90 minute classes I try to do at least three different things during each class so we might do one generation of martians then go on to another activity.

So, I just finished updating this activity and typing out very detailed instructions so that I could post it to TpT. There is a sample file that can be downloaded for free and the complete activity is only $4.00 for the whole 20 page document! Follow this link to my TpT store to check out this awesome activity for your own biology classes!

Summr to do list...

I have a huge summer to do list for work, not to mention the fact that I am doing full time research and have a ton of house projects that I would like to get done as well. With so much on my plate I am hoping that sharing my goals will give me incentive to keep up with making progress on them.

So here is the list....

For my biology classes:

• Reorganize and touch up all unit calendars - some progress has been made
• Add unit project lists for remaining units that didn't get them this year
• Restructure/reorganize/improve the stream study plan so that it is a more meaningful research experience for students.
• Better plan for using and assessing journals and portfolios. I found some great resources on using interactive science notebooks that I think will really help me improve how I use this in my classroom!

For my chemistry classes:

• Reorganize and touch up all unit calendars
• Look at the chemical supply inventory and figure out where to add in more labs utilizing the new materials purchased for next year.
• Look into the forensics chemistry book and figure out how much of that I can implement

For my physics classes (2nd semester):

• More problem sets and reorganize notes

For my student research class (2nd semester):

• Make a plan....this will be the first time I am teaching this class. the intention is that during the first few weeks I will guide students through several experiences with the goal of teaching them how to design experiements and get their creative juices flowing. Then for as much of the time as possible they will be designing experiments and I will be more of a guide and resource for this. I need to come up with effective goals and assessment tools for this type of class. Any ideas would be appreciated!

Overal classroom needs:

• I am downloaded a ton of resources from TpT to do this cool owl theme for my classroom decoration. I also found some great resources for teacher binder organization - I love organizational tools despite how my desk looks most of the time. I so want to be that teacher that everyone is disguisted by how organized she is. I have a lot of work to do to get there!
• It wasn't on my original list but I have made a new homework log form!

And I am sure I will add more to these lists as I get going. It sounds like alot but the good news is that for many of the tasks it is more of a matter of improving what I already have not reinventing the wheel!