So it's been a solid 5 months at least since I blogged last, and I definitely need to get back to it. Granted I have had 2 small little blessings that have kept me (and my wife) extremely occupied. Hard to explain all the ways parenthood changes ones life, especially when there are two little ones in the house. There have definitely been some days that were a struggle for me in the classroom, working on little to no sleep and trying to come up with a new lesson for the day. But somehow we've all survived to Christmas break and have just 2 weeks left in the semester.
I also decided to change the name of the blog (not that many care) but this should reflect more of what is going on and will continue to focus heavily on my teaching escapades. But I will also occasionally post about other random things like music, sports, whatever else I feel like really. And on that note, I posted this on twitter, but for anyone that listened to Tony Sly or No Use for a Name, the tribute album that was done for him is outstanding. Other great bands/albums from this 2013 (or that I got this year) I've played over and over again are the new stuff from Passafire, Balance and Composure, The Wonder Years, The Gaslight Anthem, The Flatliners, and City and Colour. Still need to get copies of the latest Avett Brothers and Polar Bear Club though.
Anyway, onto the important stuff, the teaching. This year has been a whirlwind it seems and not just for the aforementioned reasons that I have at home. Our school switched from teaching 90 minute blocks where I have the kids on an every other day basis to now it's 45 minutes every day. But when you factor in the transition into the classroom and the class change that we have with my science counterpart, I'm lucky to get 40 solid minutes. It has certainly brought a fair share of challenges as class seems to be nearly over when we get good and rolling. Add in the fact that the social studies and science departments have been guinea pigs for introducing laptops into the classroom on an almost 1to1 basis, and that has added to the chaos. I'll give the kids credit, they've adjusted probably as well as they could have to this all. They know that class has to begin right away, and it took some longer than others, but most (at least my 8th graders) have all figured out, that you need to be on task and get assignments done rather than use the computers for any other activities. The nice thing that we've had using gaggle and we've used google drive is that kids can complete assignments outside of class if more time is needed. It's helped some with my differentiation for those that work at a slower pace and my AIG kids have been able to show some more creativity than in years past. I also think that the new curriculum that we put in has helped too. It's certainly helped with our Common Formative Assessments as we focus on just a couple of standards during a 6 week unit rather than several through a given time period. I'm excited about some of the things we have coming up this year. I'll list them out below as well as what we've done and what may need to be fixed with them next year.
Our first units for both 7th and 8th were really choppy, which probably isn't too surprising since it's a new way we're teaching and I tried to have to students drive some of what we learned by giving them some choice. Well next year, I'm going to have to make it much more structured and choose the recent events to focus on. In 7th grade, it was a lot easier because of all of the different issues going on around the world that are actually covered in the Essential Standards like Rwanda, the roles of the UN & EU, global disease, etc.
The culminating timelines for this unit didn't go as well as I had hoped either. I let the kids have total freedom and ended up with a lot of timelines that were incomplete or had several events revolving around a 5 to 10 year span.
My 8th graders made disaster action plans that we were fortunate enough to present to one of our assistant principals. These went alright, but I need to teach my kids how to follow a rubric before we do a project like this, because that was a huge struggle for a lot of kids.
My government unit went really well but I felt that it was really rushed. We did a Senate simulation where the students were on committees and went through the bill proposal process and had another AP act as President to pass or veto our bills. The kids actually came up with 2 that were passed and the debates that we had went really well (next year I'll definitely have to film them). We also made Active Citizen Pamphlets and I felt that went really well too. (For those outside of North Carolina looking for good lessons and activities, check out http://database.civics.unc.edu/lesson/ I've used several of their lessons and have had great success with them as far as engagement and actual learning taking place.
Going forward, we have several big projects that I'll talk about in future posts. I'm currently working on tweaking the zombie based learning ideas of David Hunter. I'm not paying 120 dollars for all of his stuff, so I'll try to create my own lessons and ideas to wrap up the semester and our Manifest Destiny unit for my 8th graders. Just need to combine the "Walking Dead" with "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Killer." Should be interesting, I hope the kids enjoy it. For my 7th graders, I'm again tweaking the work done by @Braz74 with his create your own civilization lessons. We've talked about doing like an Age of Empires thing for the end of our Exploration and Imperialism unit and so we'll use some of his stuff to hopefully create something good for them. Hopefully I'll have some good stuff in 2-3 weeks time as to how these mini-units went.
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