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! 

Cyber Monday Preview and Freebie Linky!

 

Be sure to check out the Cyber Monday preview AND Freebie Linky over at "An Educator's Life." I just went and linked up a couple of items and there are some great resources for both categories.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have finally gotten my product count over 20 so there is a good variety of things to choose from and everything will be 20% plus using the Tpt code of "CYBER" will bring you up to 28% off.

 

So for my own little preview....My highest wish listed items are:

 

This product is one of several flash card sets that I have. The product includes colorful vocabulary cards with cell structure and function vocabulary terms on one side and blank lines for students to write out the definition on the other side.

 

 

The lab rules card sort is my second most wish listed item. This is a set of fill-in style question cards that students match the missing word to the safety rule card to complete the sentences. This is great for a start of a science class or anytime during the year as a review of this important topic.

 

This last product is actually on very few wish lists - however that's only because people seem to just go ahead and buy this one. It has been my top seller for several months now. This is a mitosis card sort set that includes pictures of each stage, name cards, and descriptions of each stage. It is a great review or introduction for high school or middle school.

Be sure to click on the top picture to head over and check out lots of other wish list items and freebies.





TpT Cyber Monday Sale!!!

It's coming! The TpT Cyber Monday (and Tuesday) sale! I am so excited to be participating in a site wide sale for the first time. I have set EVERYTHING in my store to be 20% off on Monday and Tuesday only. To make this even better TpT is offering an additional discount if you use the code CYBER at check out that will make the total 28% off my store items. A better deal is not going to come along anytime soon. Click on the picture below to go directly to my store and begin shopping!

Now is the time to buy those items that have been sitting on your wish list and to check out some of my new products.

I also wanted to let everyone know that starting in December that I am going to be changing the name of my TpT store to match my blog "Diary of a Mad Scientist". I think it just makes sense to use the same name in both places.

Understanding by Design

The entire SAU where I work has undertaken an initiative to train every staff member in in our three schools in Understanding by Design (UbD). The goal I that over time all staff members will redesign their lessons following a UbD template. Right now we are still just scratching the surface of what we will be doing but I am itching to actually get started on my lesson plans. It probably sounds strange to say that I am excited about having extra work added on by my school district. It's not that I have so much free time that I need something else to do, but I honestly think that this process is going to help our school improve. For me I know there are many things that I already do in my classroom that fit in this model and I think that going through this process will help me to improve the lessons that are already good and really change the ones that aren't so good.

If you are not familiar with UbD, in a nutshell, it is creating lessons that focus on building deep student understanding rather than just shallow knowledge of a topic. The lessons are designed backwards,meaning you start with creating the goals for what you want students to be able to do at the end of the lesson and then build learning experiences to get students there. As we have been introduces to this we have been having conversations about the difference between understandings and knowledge, how to measure understanding, and what we see as the challenges to this process.

One of the biggest challenges of this for me will be redesigning some of my assessment tools. From what we have read and discussed so far UbD really pushes for performance tasks and other assessments that authentically measure more than just memorization. I know some of my assessments will be up to par with maybe just a bit of tweaking but for others I know I will be starting from scratch. This is the part that is making me the most apprehensive about this process.

I have been looking for resources about UbD, and while there is tons of great information for reading I have yet to find a source with good sample lesson or lesson ideas. If anyone knows of any resources that might relate to this and help me through the process I would love if  you could leave me a comment with the information.

On another note....several weeks ago SOMEONE posted a "Thankful" linky. I grabbed the template with every intention of completing it and linking up. I have long since forgotten who was hosting this but I wanted to share mine anyways.