The New Science Teacher

I have this one student who who, everyday after I say "Hi", says, "Can I just go to the office?"  I always tell him to take a seat and then try to teach him something.  He talks a lot during class but does not usually cause any serious problems.  Today was different.  Today when I told him to take his seat he turned to the rest of the class and said "My mother raped me."  So, I walked him out of the class room and had him sit outside the room until the assistant principal came by to get him. He was picked up by a sheriff's deputy.  I don't know where they took him.  After school I called DCSS and faxed in the report.  I feel sorry for the boy's parents if it isn't a true accusation.

During the first month of class I really worked hard with my students to teach the scientific method, inductive, and deductive reasoning.  About 1/3 just don't get it and that has really bothered me.  I was wondering what to do to help them when I discovered this morning while talking to a colleague (we both get to school about 90 minutes early each day) that all my students have been taught to think in terms of Claim, Evidence, Reasoning!   All that is is looking at the scientific method and deductive reasoning from the other side of the process.  Whereas the premise+premise=conclusion and  phenomenon-->hypothesis-->experiment-->theory steps take the scientist from virgin observation of nature through to a published journal article, the CER process gives the science student a system for evaluating the published work of scientists, including movies I might show in class and their own textbook!  So that is what we started doing today.  M...

The Concord Consortium has this interesting website that provides computer simulations/models for scientific concepts.  The student can select a practice, a core idea, and a crosscutting concept then the website provides several models to play with.   At least, that's what I thought it did. I selected as follows Practice: analyzing data Core idea; Earth and space science Cross cutting concept: energy The website gave me a whole bunch of different simulations but it also gave me a really cool real-world experiment on evaporative cooling .  Since this week is college and career week at my school I think I'll do this with my class and talk about skipping college and working as an HVAC technician instead.

While searching for lesson plan ideas (Because my district doesn't have NGSS compliant textbooks or other materials) I came across this from the California Academy of Sciences  in San Francisco. It looks like something I can cobble together with some other stuff and have some good lessons.

1. Depth of  Knowledge in four content areas . 2. Depth of Knowledge in the fine arts . 3. Depth of Knowledge and technology use . 4. Digital resources to support Depth of Knowledge and rigor in the classroom .

Weather can be pretty boring in California, but atmosphere, climate, and weather are what my 6th grade students are studying right now.   I do feel the pressure to get them to DOK 3 and 4  but it seems most of my students never even noticed that the hills to the west are covered in thick redwood forests while the hills to the east are are covered with brown grass.  Nevertheless, I have to get them thinking about what climate patterns are responsible for this di-chromatic arrangement of plant life, and beyond that, have them predict what plant species live in other parts of the world based on the climates of those places. . So much of my time is spent on just getting my students to DOK1. Yes, on my classroom walls are giant posters my students made that say things such as: "A=B, B=C, therefore A=C" "What is the physical evidence?" "What is the energy doing?" "If two claims negate each other it is possible that both are false, but one ...

I began this blog for another course (MAT670, I think) but am now updating it for MAT671. I am about to be fifty years old and I am embarking on a new career.  in the past I have been a soldier, a bookkeeper, an advertising executive, a paralegal, and a real estate investor.  For the last two years I have been working as a substitute teacher. My education has kind of been all over the place.  I was homeschooled until I joined the U.S. Army at age 17.  They trained me to be a chaplain assistant, a personnel clerk, and a combat lifesaver (kind like a low level medic.  All it really meant was that I could start IVs, treat for shock, and give morphine).  The army also sent me to The Air Assault School . About a year before I got out of the Army I took a class in sociology at Austin Peay State University and discovered that I enjoyed academics, so when I was discharged from the army and moved to California I started taking classes at De Anza College....