A definite highlight from last week was starting the
chemistry unit. The end of our last on biomes and ecosystems didn’t involve a
lot of lab work which the students really enjoy. This whole week has been
conducting an experiment on finding the “mystery mixture” with deductive
reasoning and observations of 9 known substances. It was a lot of fun to let
the students’ use the process of elimination and to try new tests that might
reveal to them what the mystery mixture was. Each day we would progressively
move closer to what the substance was and that kept students very engaged. It
was a good lab to break into our chemistry unit as well because it reminded and
taught them their lab procedures that I know I never received in middle school.
Something that made me think a little differently about kids
was a girl who finally made it back into class after missing 10 days. She
missed 10 days not because she was sick but because her parents took her to
California without picking up any of her work. I was actually stressing out for
her when she got back because knowing myself I would’ve been out of my mind
thinking I could never get back on track. She on the other hand apologized for
being absent, asked for her work, and got right back into the swing of things.
I was amazed by her composure in that moment but then I was also amazed with
her willingness to come forward and ask for help. I guess her predicament would’ve
been way out of my comfort zone at her age and I realized I should expect a lot
from my students because they can rise to the occasion.
I will definitely add in the practice of assigning tasks to
students who either need to get up and move around or finish their work early
and become a distraction to other students.
One boy just cannot sit still in his seat for an extended period of time
and instead of punishing him for his behavior and not making any permanent
corrections my teacher allows him to pass out papers or hand out red pencils
for self-assessing math assignments. He takes his role seriously and it becomes
a win for everybody. The only issue I can ever see with this is if a student is
not comfortable with another classmate seeing their score. For this class
though she must have asked everyone at the start of the year if it was okay
because it’s never been questioned before.
I had a management issue for the last 5 minutes of the
period (felt like 30 minutes). The students had conducted an experiment on
their nine substances to determine seven pairs that reacted together. They were
in lab groups of 3-4 and so some of the results varied to a degree as I was
walking around. I wanted to bring them back together as a class and go over
their results and summarized them on the document camera. Unfortunately, I received very little feedback
and most students had already put their data sheet in their binders. They
basically had shut down and I had to be stern with them to get their data sheet
back out but they were still reluctant to give their feedback. I think I should’ve
given them warning at the start that we were going to summarize and the benefit
of comparing data. I think they just thought it was repetitive and pointless
even though I knew they had discrepancies in their data.
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