I'm home for the holidays and randomly saw my blog on my parents computer's favorite pages. Interestingly enough, I have just concluded the force and motion unit I described in my last post (pretty much one year later).
I am at a new school and I am teaching primarily 7th grade science, but one section of 6th grade science.
We spent half as long on potential and kinetic energy, and my kids mastered it. I don't think I changed anything about the lesson, but they got it. I still had one kid just totally mix them up, but I was able to help him out in tutorials.
Despite having a tough start to the school year, first semester panned out to be pretty great. It absolutely flew by.
Monday, December 24, 2012
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Half a Year later...
I knew teaching would take up a lot of my time, but I really didn't get just how much. As you probably have noticed, it has been 6 months since I last updated my blog, sorry!
This year has been rough. There hasn't been many changes except for the batch of kids. We did change the schedule though, so now I see all 5 classes everyday for 65 minutes. I thought it would be nice to see them everyday, but teaching the same thing 5 times in a row, when it doesn't seem like they want to listen, is really difficult for me.
My biggest struggle is getting them to pay attention. I don't just mean looking at me. I can get them to do that but it's the internal thing that they need to do for themselves to actually listen to the words that are coming out of my mouth. How do you make sure 32 kids are actually getting it? It's not a rhetorical question, I'd really like to know.
We've been talking about potential and kinetic energy. We started with just potential energy. Stored energy. That the higher an object is the more potential energy it has because gravity gives objects at higher elevations the potential to fall much further. Easy, right?
This is the lesson:
Most kids were able to do all this when they were working with their groups, but when it came to checking what they learned with an exit ticket... they obviously didn't get it.
Let's review: I probably said about 20 times that potential energy depends on the height. The higher the object the more potential energy it has. So why, when I asked a student why he said that George had the most potential energy does he answer with, "Well he doesn't look tired?"
SERIOUSLY?!!?
This is why I'm frustrated.
This year has been rough. There hasn't been many changes except for the batch of kids. We did change the schedule though, so now I see all 5 classes everyday for 65 minutes. I thought it would be nice to see them everyday, but teaching the same thing 5 times in a row, when it doesn't seem like they want to listen, is really difficult for me.
My biggest struggle is getting them to pay attention. I don't just mean looking at me. I can get them to do that but it's the internal thing that they need to do for themselves to actually listen to the words that are coming out of my mouth. How do you make sure 32 kids are actually getting it? It's not a rhetorical question, I'd really like to know.
We've been talking about potential and kinetic energy. We started with just potential energy. Stored energy. That the higher an object is the more potential energy it has because gravity gives objects at higher elevations the potential to fall much further. Easy, right?
This is the lesson:
|
Most kids were able to do all this when they were working with their groups, but when it came to checking what they learned with an exit ticket... they obviously didn't get it.
Let's review: I probably said about 20 times that potential energy depends on the height. The higher the object the more potential energy it has. So why, when I asked a student why he said that George had the most potential energy does he answer with, "Well he doesn't look tired?"
SERIOUSLY?!!?
This is why I'm frustrated.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)