pics

Elements

• Elements of matter- do a Science Central Demo
• Elements of robotics- Borrow Science Central's VEX robots and have kids do basic programming.
• Elementary- Talk about Sherlock Holmes and do a mystery clue scavenger hunt. This might be interesting... but I might get over my head on this one. What else is new?

Gumballs

A whole lot of gumballs. Had students and staff guess how many. Got about 150 guesses. Not bad, would have liked more. Once again technology was helpful, but fell short when most students could not access their devices when they needed. Rather, they could, but it was not convenient for them, and when it was, they forgot about the gumball because it was not right in front of them. Got some good math out of it. Absolute value graphs for my 8th graders, mean, median, mode, and histograms for my 6th graders. Still not sure if it was worth the effort. I think there is more math to do here. 

• Would weighing be an accurate way to estimate?
• Volume? Probably not, unless we talked about the packing efficiency of spheres. Then again, that sounds interesting...
• One kid had a great idea to fill the jar with water, measure the amount, and subtract from the capacity (2 gal). Might work but would make the gumballs sticky, and I'd like to use this jar in the summer for the homemade lemonade my wife will make me after mowing.

Technology

I love it, I hate it. I had a neat idea to send over some videos to my students back at home while I was on the DC trip with the 8th graders. It work fairly well, and the kids liked it from what I heard. I need to bring this experience to my teaching when I'm in the classroom. I also had some trouble uploading and getting it to them. Sometimes I'm not sure if the extra effort is worth the payoff when it comes to tech, especially if it doesn't work as well as it should. The videos did create some nice discussion when I got back. One video I made with the help of a student cameraman.

Where was I?

A new job, new home, new wife, and many other "new's" later, I'd like to try this again. I have a different set of challenges ahead of me, and it's been fun, exhausting, exciting, frustrating, and many other things. I'd like to be consistent here, but with the way things are going so far, I may not on on much. Still, I'd like to use this as a sounding board for ideas and things that go well, and things that don't. This will probably be more professional reflection and less personal, though I can never keep those two straight sometimes.