Sassy Science Teacher

What is something you've learned on your own recently? Well, isn't this a timely question. You see, just like nearly every other educator in the country, I had two days to switch my 74 seventh graders to a remote learning environment. For me, using Google Classroom, Flipgrid, Meet, Zoom, etc ... was not the challenge. What I had to learn was how to teach kids to do this without being in front of them. I knew ... but I didn't know , how much I rely on their subtle (and not so subtle) feedback as I'm teaching them face to face. I had to learn how to chunk information much more efficiently than I have ever done. I had to learn to make a series of shorter videos, each with a discrete topic rather than one 5 minute video explaining everything. I had to learn to streamline . I'm writing this in the past tense, but we're only going into the third week. I am definitely still in the beginning stages of this adventure.  I've read Daniel Pink before and Driv...

Digital Citizenship is something our entire school “does” five times per year for one hour. Each teacher has a class of about 10 students and we follow lessons from Common Sense Media. It’s very possible that other teaching on DC is happening during STEM class but I’m not aware of anything. Outside of this, there is no formal training in this area. I don’t know the history of why we have scheduled DC lessons this way and honestly, it’s not something I have considered adding to science class before this week. I assumed that by 7th grade, students were well versed in digital safety and citizenship. This probably isn’t true and brings up a lot of questions: “What is the embedded training in grades 4-6 around Digital Citizenship? Why does our school teach only about online safety? What is my responsibility as a science teacher to embed training into my class time? Could RTI or study hall time be used for this?” The whole school culture at GMS remains foggy to me. I’ve been teaching th...

Describe your project idea, learners, and context (approximately 300 words) In this 7th grade science unit, students learn about Geology and Plate Tectonics as they explore the geological stories of places.  First, they will learn about Earth's beginnings. They will understand how our planet was formed and how the internal structure of the Earth leads to the movement of plates. They will begin to understand that the landscape we see out the window isn't static; it's constantly changing. We will focus on the concept of scale as they see the Earth's history modeled on non-human time scales. Eventually they will understand that the Earth is in constant flux with the surface changing shape over thousands and millions of years.  Second, students will look at a case study: The White Mountains. They will learn about the 3 major mountain building events in New England's history and the long period of glaciation that followed.  Third, they will choose their own place ...