Coupla Things v21 (1/28/2011)

Post date: Jan 29, 2011 5:15:49 AM

Time flies these days and as talk of high school applications, DC, and graduation begins to emerge I am reminded that my time with this group is finite -- I want to make every minute matter! We have much valuable work ahead of us before these kids head off to make good on the long term investment in their own learning. Our job is to challenge them daily and push them towards their highest potential.

English:

We started the week off with a quick-write in which the students set and articulate their goals for second semester. Most of the kids wrote concise, articulate statements of intent, and while only time will tell if intent will lead to action, but I'm an eternal optimist! Next, the kids read and responded to a great short story called "Thank You M'am" about an inner city woman who teaches a would-be purse-napper life lessons by turning the tables on him and giving him a bit of tough love and timely mothering. Grammar took center stage for the later part of the week as I gave the students a needs-assessment on Thursday and a lesson on pronoun-antecedent agreement. I think that our new focus on mechanics will be painless as well as increase the quality of their writing.

Science:

Nothing says science like burning something up! The main topic for the first part of the week was heat, so I had the students burn a peanut in order to under to better understand conduction, convection, and radiation as well as the workings of a calorimeter. After a sloppy attempt to measure the total energy stored in a peanut om Monday, we made improvements in our methodology and then performed version 2.0 the next day. That is how science works!

For the last two days of the week we transitioned into chemistry. I used the photosynthesis-respiration cycle to connect their biology/botony studies of seventh grade and the energy topics of first semester with the chemistry topics around which much of the second semester will revolve. Today, Friday, the students worked on making sense of balancing some equations by thinking of them in terms of cookies and chips -- odd but effective.

Selectives: Since most of the students in 'my' electives are recipients of this email I will include a bit about them as well. The woodshop class looks like an excellent group that will work together, enjoy their projects, and build great things for the school. After only a few minutes with the comedy class I could tell that there is much energy and talent in that group and we will be makin' funny like no one's business for the rest of the year. Lastly, the video crew started their first project today and I am impressed by their work so far.

Thanks for reading and have a good weekend.

Chris