The science fair seems to have gone fairly well. All classes took the Reformation Summative while I was supervising the fair. Other than that, no new news! See you all tomorrow!
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Greetings, my friends! I have important news! There are no real updates about school itself, as today was largely occupied by the Wolves Game. (Wolves' game? Since it is their game as a team, does the possessive apply? I'd guess so.) Yeah, Wolves' Game. Those left behind hopefully caught up on missing work.
Critically, tomorrow is the Summative in social studies for the European History/Reformation unit. Please, please, please, walk in prepared. Remember, I will not be in the classroom tomorrow because I'll be running science fair down in the Library, so I will be unable to answer questions or give feedback while you are writing your two responses. If you need to ask questions, I will check my website until about 9 pm tonight. See yesterday's post for links to the info found on this website. In other news, due to the insanity of this weeks schedule, I will NOT be able to get normal progress reports out tomorrow. Instead, they will be sent home Friday, along with an automated call to everyone and a complete emailed report to everyone. I am not assigning new work over the break, but it will be critical to catch up on missing work for many of you. Lastly, in science it will not be possible to complete grading the rough drafts by break, so the probable schedule will be to return them when we get back, and have the final drafts due that first full week in January. That is all for now. Hola! Hollah? Howdy!
I am spending most of today in a super-long meeting. You can anticipate my excitement. In my absence, we have the usual assignments. In science, we read about a new science/engineering/technology/math career: the electrician! As always, your goal is to read through the information, and then write a CAR response based on the normal prompt: Evaluate the positive and negative aspects to this career. Explain whether you would personally recommend this career to someone, and why. We also read an article in social studies, which you can find here. Based on that article, we are to answer the first 13 questions with short answers, and then answer one of the Higher Order questions using the CAR format. Both those sets of questions are due on Thursday. Speaking of Thursday, don't forget the summative for the European History/Reformation summative is also that day. Walk in prepared to write your two responses. All the handouts and the summative prompts themselves are found here. Get to work! Mainly I hate them because there is so much stuff that gets in the way of teaching. And learning. Like field trips, and meetings, and various other teacherly obstacles that tend to either remove me from my classroom, or remove my students, or both. But rarely neither. Okay, so, today was mainly comprised of the fall play and conversations. We turned in/collected the response for the Fiction to Fact text in social studies, and then, depending on the class, roamed off into various discussions about the origins of humans, how humans migrated around the world, etc. I enjoyed the discussions, but...well, I just feel like we should have gotten more done. Of course, that's always true. Please keep in mind, the flashcards for the prokaryotic structures and diffusion are due to be checked off tomorrow. I'm out of the building tomorrow, but I will be around after school both Tuesday and Wednesday.
I asked my self that this morning, when only half my class arrived in homeroom. I mean, I had known that students would be absent so that they could perform in the Winter concert, but...but! I only had, like, two and a half students!
So, today essentially turned into a giant study hall. The only new material I introduced was the study guide linking diffusion to the various Prokaryotic structures we've been reading and talking about. (I will post that below.) The information needs to be turned into flashcards, which will be checked off on Tuesday (I think.) We also checked off the flashcards that were due today for the Prokaryote Terms and Definitions. I have been grading the research papers. Overall, the major issues I'm seeing are unclear or missing explanations, and then some minor things with missing reference sections or incorrect citation format. I will have all those graded and entered by Monday, so we can discuss them then. I'm thinking the final draft will be due next Friday? Possibly? More on that later. In social studies, each class had some time to finish cooperatively reading and translating the Fiction to Fact Native American text from the past few days. Because so many people need to be responsible for finishing that, I reduced the assignment to a single CAR out of the 3 options. This is due Monday for all classes. Don't forget, the Summative essays will be done next Thursday in class! make sure you think about those, and come in with a plan on what you will write about! Preparation is essential to success! I hope everyone has a good weekend! Very Tired. I didn't mean to underline that, but, well. I'm too tired to change it. So there.
I sympathize deeply with everyone staying late for the concert tonight. Oh, well. Today was fine, though. In science, we took a moment to use the handout for the prokaryote terms and the Prokaryotic Tour text in order to try and draw a labeled model of what a prokaryote cell might look like, with all the possible structures included. Everyone then had a little time to work on turning the definitions into flashcards, which are due tomorrow. In social studies, we started/continued reading through the Fiction to Fact text about Native Americans, with a goal of finishing translating and modifying it together by tomorrow so that we can discuss questions as a class and start work on the CARs. 2 of the 3 responses are going to be due Monday, so it would be nice if we can get a jump on those tomorrow with some extra work time. Don't forget, any late rough drafts for science are due, and we have our summative in social studies for the Reformation unit next Thursday. It looks like everyone who did not turn in their science paper today lucked out a little, since it seems unlikely I will be able to get those calls set up by a deccent hour today. With that said, they will go out tomorrow. Bon nuit! Today was altogether a lovely one, in comparison to yesterday's miseries. That is of course, from my perspective. All of you may feel differently. So! Today was quite simple, especially in Science class... All we did was respond to any remaining questions about the Rough Draft that is due tomorrow for the research paper. In most classes, there were no questions. I will not be able to check the site much at all tonight, so if there are any remaining questions, be sure to comment early. And cross your fingers that I can check in and answer anything. If you need to, check the post from earlier for details... http://huffordstevenson.weebly.com/classroom-blog/a-fine-day-to-you-entity In Social Studies, we reviewed the best responses for the Reformation text CAR prompts, and watched a short video on the Reformation as a review, which I'll post below. We then went on to brainstorm what we know about native cultures, and to watch some videos that highlight some inaccuracies in how movies especially represent "Indians." You can find the text we started reading and the videos under the Social Studies Tab.
Triple sigh. Today made me very sad. Whilst I recognize the importance of independent work, and the opportunity to use technology in the classroom is pretty critical it is, for me, quite dull.
I suppose that's not fair. I wasn't bored, precisely. I was certainly busy enough running around helping people and answering questions. It just wasn't as much fun as a a class discussion, I guess? Oh, well. So today, each class chose to use both periods as independent work time to either finish their research (if they didn't get it done during the other class periods) OR start working on their rough draft for the paper, with an introduction, 3 body paragraphs, each which explains at least three important details about one of the three main topics from the research, and a conclusion. Whether written or types, this must be double spaced, with a blank line separating each line of text so it can be edited easily. This is due on Thursday. Hopefully, we can do some catching up in Social Studies tomorrow. I would like to try to squeeze in a DNA lab before break starts at the end of next week, but we are losing at least 4 days next week to various activities and absences, so we shall see... Finally, I have taken all the files saved to the Student drive today, and uploaded them to a public folder so you can download them and work on them at home. (Hint: once downloaded, you must save them on your computer. You cannot save them back to the website.) That folder can be found by clicking on this sentence as a link. And with that, a good night to all! Okay. Today's goal was a simple one: to check off the researched information for the Science Fair Report, and to start work on our rough drafts.
The rough draft must take the information from the research and present it. As in the outline (see last week's posts,) you must have an introduction and conclusion. There should also be three body paragraphs, each of which must present and explain at least 3 details from the research. Your goal in your conclusion is to give a basic explanation of how the ideas from your research can explain something from your experiment. The rough draft must be double spaced if typed, or leave blank spaces between lines if handwritten. We will be peer editing this on Thursday, when it is due. (In most classes, we did not actually start on this today, so we will begin tomorrow.) In social studies, we simply brainstormed a review of our Medieval European Society and the Reformation unit in terms of economics, religion, hidden enemies, social order and safety, and competition over power and resources. I also (re-)introduced the summative assessment for this topic, which will be given next Thursday (12/18/14.) As before, it will be an open note, in-class essay. Medieval Society and the Reformation Summative Select two of the themes below. Write two separate CAR format responses explaining three ways in which each one relates to Medieval European Society and/or the Reformation.
Today was worktime. Check prior posts for what the work was on. Main topics and supporting details are due Monday for the research project in science. For homeroom 166, Prokaryotic definitions are due Monday. In social studies, 2 of the 4 CAR prompts in the Reformation packet are due Monday.
Detentions and study hall were cancelled for after school today due to a family conflict. Have a great weekend! |
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Mr. StevensonScience Teacher. Fanatic lover of Board games. Historian. Huge Nerd. Scholastic Bowl Coach. |