Kid: I'm done with my scientific explanation ( Read more... )

I have just completed the first week of the research project for which I will be spending several weeks in classrooms. I am currently Somewhere In California, where I visited five schools and interviewed teachers and students. I'll write more about the whole experience in depth later, but for now you get two awesome things kids said ( Read more... )

The New York Times provides a rather apt note in their story on the Obama back-to-school speech:

Millions of students watched, but not all with rapt attention. At Bolingbrook High School southwest of Chicago, about 200 students viewed the address on a large screen in an auditorium, and a few of them looked downright drowsy ( Read more... )

It looks like I will be spending a large chunk of my fall in classrooms. I'm very excited about this. (It's doing research, not teaching. And I'm kind of freaked out by the fact that I'll be observing teachers teaching a unit I wrote, but I am sure it will be a positive learning experience rather than completely traumatic. Yeah. Science ( Read more... )

Yesterday, I finished the Astronomy Unit That Would Not Die ( Read more... )

"Tell your students to imagine they were led blindfolded to a very large building ( Read more... )

Poll

I ran into the mother of one of my former students at the grocery store the other day. (Teacher's Rulebook #47: Always dress like you're going to work when you go to the grocery store, because that is the main place you run into parents. You know, because they tend not to go to nightclubs.) We chatted for a while, she explained how her son is ( Read more... )

Chemistry unit #2, done! Thank god. That took what, four months, when it was supposed to take two? No more splitting atoms with scissors. We can all sleep a little easier.

Next on my plate: Astronomy Unit That Would Not Die Returns. Um, whoo-hoo.

Trend alert: Band names beginning with "The" are out. Bands with "Glass" in their names are in. Also - random animals, still popular ( Read more... )