Supporting the Kid

Sometimes it's not about teaching.  Sometimes it's about showing interest.

Teacher Tip:

To get your kids to want to do well, you have to first show interest in their interests––and it counts more if your show it outside of the classroom.

Little picture taken with my little phone.

This week I went to a basketball game.  It's fun to go and sit with the other teachers. I only teach a small handful of kids, but I still had a couple of students on the team, and they had kept asking me if I was coming to their game.

Our 7th graders won their game with no sweat.  Our 8th graders started out strong, but in the last minute of the game, the other team caught up and we were tied.  Everyone was going crazy!  They fouled us in the last ten seconds and we were awarded 2 free throws––we missed the first!  (Suspense!)  We made the second!  With only a few seconds left to go, our team kept control of the ball and we won the game. Go CUBS!

I don't know if my students even saw me in the stands, but the best part was talking about the game with them the next day at school.  Even my "I'm too cool for all of this" student smiled a bit and talked with me about what he liked and how he wanted to improve next time.

Waves Test

This is it.  We're done with waves––both sound and light.  YAY!

Here's my test below.

Here's the review.

Now, on to electricity!

Habitats & Niches

I was excited about this lesson.  On the smart-board I had this picture enlarged, which I got from google somewhere:

I then had a bunch of different pictures of rainforest animals printed out and laminated.  I handed them out to the kids so each kid had one.  We talked about the different parts of the rainforest (canopy, understory, forest floor), and how these create different habitats for animals to live in.  They each took a turn bringing their animal up and taping it onto the smart-board over the place where it probably lives (we had discussions on why it would live there, etc.).  With each animal we also learned what it's niche in this ecosystem was.  It was pretty fun, and it allowed the kids to move a little bit. 

Afterwards we did a worksheet.  I can't take credit for the ideas behind the second page of this worksheet.  I got the ideas from different worksheets that I saw as I surfed the web.  I liked them, and thought they were a good way to help my kids differentiate between the two.  Maybe I'll have them start with the second page and finish with the first. 

To get the worksheet, scroll to the bottom of the page.

Final Wave Review

We are officially done with waves––both sound and light.

Today we finished off our last class of it by having a mini-lesson on what a lightyear is and why it's important, and then we did a final review for powerpoint.



These questions on the review are pretty close (if not word for word) to the questions on their test next class.  I had them get out a piece of paper, copy down the question, then we'd talk about what they thought the answer was, I would show the answer, and they would copy it down.

Most of the kids were doing really well on the review.  I had two boys in front for one of my classes that would celebrate with multiple, loud high-fives with big smiles every time one of them answered a question correctly.  The girls in that class just rolled their eyes at them. hahaha.  Middle school.

To download my powerpoint, click here.

Chinese New Year

So . . . this teacher grew up in China.  And this teacher loves to share the excitement of Chinese New Year with her students.  (These small town kids could do with a little more culture.)  It's something small and new to add into one class during this time of the year, but everyone loves it.


This year I just did a small 15 minute "lesson" at the end of the period.  I wrote 新年快乐 (xinnian kuaile––Happy New Year) on the board and taught them how to say it.  We talked about the color red and some of the things people do to celebrate the new year.

When you add some Chinese characters on your whiteboard, it's easy for kids to forget normal routine (i.e. come in quietly before the bell and start your bell ringer).  It seems like every single one of them asked me "Miss, what is that?" "Miss, what does that say?"  I probably should have ended their curiosity right then and just told them.  Instead, I told them to finish their bell ringer and I'd tell them afterwards.  It took a lot longer to get through the bell ringer than I thought, because they still kept asking me what the characters said. (Didn't you hear what I just told your neighbor?)

Small decoration on the smart board.

They all wondered why I hadn't brought food in for them.

I taught them the story of the Chinese Zodiac, using a power point I found online that had the story. I added a couple of slides at the end as we talked about the zodiac, and they discovered which animals they belonged to.  My eighth graders were either in the year of the dragon or the snake, and they all enjoyed that.

from rekyen.tk

from creativechinese.com

I then got out my little jianzi (Chinese hacky-sack thing with feathers) and let them try it out.  The boys all liked this more than the girls, but it was lots of fun to spread the tables apart and let them figure this out.  It's a lot harder than it looks! (I know this isn't a CNY thing, but it's a Chinese thing for them to experiment with.

jianzi

We watched this video so I could show them how good people can get at this game.  After trying it for themselves, they were super impressed.

Happy New Year!  Happy Year of the Ram!

Disney Adventures

Our science department has a lot of awesome videos.  The one I'll be showing tomorrow for my students is Disney Nature: Predator and Prey.  I have loved this Ecology unit for 7th grade, because there are lots of awesome videos you can use to visualize a concept.  Food webs, producers, consumers, biomes, ecosystems, etc.  It's just been great.  The kids have enjoyed it, too. 

But we can't just have the kids watch the video and be done.  There has to be evidence that they were paying attention.  The following worksheet is just that.  I actually got most of my ideas from the DVD's educator resources.  Check those out if you have the Classroom Edition. 

For the worksheet, scroll to the bottom of the page to download.

Potential Energy

This is an oldie that I made for my kids during our December Energy unit.  It's a potential energy vs. kinetic energy experiment that involves a marble, a ramp, a timer.  Kids see if the speed of the marble (kinetic energy) will change if you vary the height from which the marble is released (potential energy).

The kids had fun with this.  My kids had trouble with calculating the speed, so I had to walk them through that.  But I like this because it incorporates their scientific understanding, their math skills, and their writing abilities in one.

This was before I started our Hypothesis and Conclusion writing unit (it was mostly from this experiment––plus a few others before––that convinced me that backing up and learning how to write scientific hypotheses and conclusions was important!).

Click below for the lab page.

Introducing: Light!

So we've already sorta started light with my eighth graders.  We had done the experiment on lightning/thunder to solidify their knowledge that light is faster than sound.  But I kind of back-tracked and finished sound with more gusto than I thought I would.  So now we're officially starting light.

Yesterday's class was a lot of lecture and note taking.  We watched little videos throughout (that I found on unitedstreaming.com) to help demonstrate the different principles we were talking about.  I tried to do little demonstrations throughout as well, to make sure they understood what they were writing down.

I made guided notes.  They can use these throughout the unit to help them on their worksheets, but they can't use them on quizzes/tests.

To get the guided notes, click below.

Light Notes: Page 1

Light Notes: Page 2

There was then a follow-up worksheet for them to do.  I didn't anticipate how long it would take to do the notes (it took almost the entire 1.5 hour block!).  Instead of doing the worksheet, I had them take out an extra sheet of paper and draw 2-3 examples of light reflecting off an object and into our eye.  They had to name the colors reflected and the colors absorbed by the object.

Here's the worksheet we would have done, and which we'll probably do next week (or sometime later in the unit as a review).

To get this worksheet, click below.

Light Reflection and Absorption Worksheet

What makes up an ecosystem?

After our biome/ecosystem lesson, there was still a section of the notes that wasn't finished.  Today we talked about the following:

1. Organism
2. Population
3. Community
4. Ecosystem

They caught on pretty easily, but we'll continue to review these terms throughout the rest of the unit so they can really master them.  After going through a few examples of each, and then exploring how they were all identified in a picture of an ecosystem, we did the following worksheet:

Here's a preview of the worksheet, which you can download via the link at the bottom of the page.

Biomes and Ecosystems

I have already taught my kiddos about biomes.  We dove deeper and looked at ecosystems last week.  My mentor created a fabulous powerpoint that really illustrated that point.  Since we live in the desert, we started with the desert biome.  One ecosystem is the Chihuahuan Desert (our desert).  Another desert is the Saharan Desert.  There were pictures of plants and animals in each one.  Students immediately recognized that they were indeed both deserts, but yes, they were also very different.

I had them fill out a graphic organizer for this lesson.  The preview is below, and you can download it at the bottom of this page.

There were 4 ecosystems of the desert biome, just to stress the point.  

• Chihuahuan Desert (Mexico/Texas/New Mexico)
• Saharan Desert (Africa)
• Great Victoria Desert (Australia)
• Antarctic Desert (Antarctica)

Some of the pictures shown in them were specifically chosen to stress the point that a biome has similar abiotic and biotic features.  For example, the coyote (chihuahuan) and the jackal (Saharan) were very similar.  The Horned Lizard (chichuahuan) and Thorny Devil (Great Victoria) are very similar. Also, Antarctic Hair Grass and the Lovegrass (Sahara) are very similar.

The abiotic similarities are definitely the limited precipitation.  The kids will protest and say there is lots of snow in Antarctica.  Then you tell them, yes, but it is still definitely a desert. Can anyone make a hypothesis of why there is lots of snow there?

Just to drive the point home, I also added two grassland ecosystems.  Both are definitely grasslands.  Both are definitely different ecosystems.

• North American Plains
• African Savanna 

Objective:

Biomes are large areas of earth.  Ecosystems are all living and nonliving things in one place. 

This lesson did a great job at helping kids really SEE the difference between Biomes and Ecosystems.

New Management Technique

This is how the school year goes. 

August: 

You introduce your classroom management plan.  Kids are timid and obediently agree with anything you say.

September: 

Kids are getting more comfortable, but are still very receptive to directions.

October: 

In routine, kids are getting tired--thank goodness for Fall Break!

November:  

In routine, kids are getting restless.

December: 

There's only 2-3 weeks of school this month, so no one is really paying attention. You can still manage them, but it takes a lot more effort.

January: 

Management plan?  What management plan? These kids own the school.

February: 

Time for a new management plan. Kids see you mean business.

March: 

Testing, so you never see your kids anyway.

April: 

More testing. When you do see your kids, they're pretty good.

May: 

School is over!  Oh, wait, it's not?  ...Yeah, it's that bad. (But why is there more school?  They were already tested, even though you were only 3/4s of the way through the year and the curriculum.)

We're in February right now.  Yes, January was awful.  Name calling, bullying, calls home, lunch detentions, parent meetings, suspensions, and even one police officer called in.  I was so consumed with stress that I didn't pay my rent for February on time.  Oops. 

So what do we teachers do?   Well, let me tell you.  Nowadays it's all about data.  Daily data.  You need to know exactly where your kids are and if they're improving because of your instruction.  If not, then you change instructional methods.  If they are, you keep doing what you were doing and continue to monitor their progress.

Behavior management is the same thing.  Classroom Management Plan working?  Great!  Keep at it!  You go, girl!  Classroom Management Plan not working?  Rip it up and throw it in the trash.  Time to start something new.

(this being said, there is merit to sticking to your rules and enforcing consequences.  If you're the weak link in your management plan, you can't blame the management plan.  Time to up your courage and trust the plan!)

I use a point system in my class.  Most of my classes respond well to the point system, which is used to earn class free time.  One class in particular was not affected at all by the points.  So I changed it.

Let me step back for a bit. I say I changed it.  Really, though, I don't think I could have done this on my own.  I tried for weeks to fix things.  It wasn't until I really started praying for help that this idea came to me.  And it came in a blink of an eye.  You should have seen me that night.  I was depressed and quietly walking around the house all evening, but as soon as I received this inspiration, I was dancing and quickly explaining to my husband all of the details and how it was going to work.  I feel like I'm a pretty good teacher, but I have to say that I feel daily help from the Lord as I try to teach and reach these students.

Okay back to the awesome plan:
There are three levels.  Blue, white, and orange.  Kids start out on the white.  It's all about homework.   If class ends and you are on the white, you have to do page 1 of the homework.  If class ends and you are on the orange, you have to do both pages of the homework.  If class ends, and you are on the blue, then you hand in your homework at the door as you leave and you don't have to do it.

You have the ability to move up and down throughout the entirety of class.  You have one warning before moving down a level.  Second time and you're out.  You have to show perfect behavior for 10 consecutive minutes before you can move back up.

I've found my kids are really motivated by no homework.  I had expected most of them to behave as they usually do and end up with homework.  To my surprise, they responded exceptionally well, and everyone behaved perfectly (well, some needed a few reminders).  No one went home with homework.

Daily Data Point:  It worked.

Revisiting Amplitude and Frequency

Remember when I said my kids need lots of review?  (If you need a review, check out this post.)

I really want my kids to be good at amplitude and frequency.  This lesson was tricky for them.  It really made them think.  But I think that's why I really liked this lesson.  It was hard!  It was tricky!  They actually had to use their brains!  THAT'S AWESOME.

We did lots of examples as a class first.  I modeled it a few times, and then I had them come up to the smart-board to give it a go.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Teaching Secret for Success:

It's really important to get the kids to practice the skill as a group (guided practice!!) before you give them the worksheet.  This way you can immediately identify and address any severe misconceptions they all have and how to fix it.  

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

I guess my professors in college really knew their stuff when they drilled into our brains the following lesson outline:

I do -- We do -- You do. 

i.e.

Model - Lead - Test.

i.e.

The kids watch me do it, the kids do it with me, then the kids show their stuff and do it on their own.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

When kids come up and do it with me, you can see that when I say "increase the amplitude," they're only increasing the crest and not deepening the trough.  Or other problems.  Then the kids like to come up when someone doesn't get it right and try to fix it.  It actually worked out well that no one's feelings got hurt, because even if they got it wrong one time, the next time they were the one wanting to fix someone else's mistake.  This wouldn't work in ever class.  The dynamics between your students is everything. 

Here's the worksheet we did today.  Again, it caused them to really think about what amplitude and frequency really meant, and how to increase or decrease both. 

Click below to get the worksheet. 

Food Pyramids

This is the FIRST post about my 7th grade science class.

7th grade is taught life sciences

8th grade is taught physical sciences

I can't decide which one I like better.  I originally wanted to be a high school biology teacher and started college majoring in Biology Education.   So I really like 7th grade.  But for some reason it's so much easier to come up with experiments for physical sciences.   

Right now in 7th grade we're in our ecology unit.  We went over the water cycle, the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, abiotic vs. biotic, biomes, and food webs, including producers, consumers, and decomposers.  Tomorrow we will talk about food pyramids.

The Main Objectives:

Matter cycles through a system.

Energy flows through the system.

Energy is lost at each stage.

We'll start by reviewing a few of the cycles we've talked about, emphasizing that that water atom, or that nutrient, can end up exactly where it started.  Then we'll transition by looking at the food web worksheet we did last class, choosing one path (or one food chain).  We'll talk about where the energy first comes from (the sun), and how it goes from the sun, through the grass, through the animal that eats the grass all the way to the top animal.  Energy is flowing because it cannot go back to the sun.

Something like that.  

Do keep in mind that my school has four classes a day at 90 minutes each. These are long classes.

Anyway, here's my food energy pyramid template.  Feel free to download and use at the bottom of this page. :)

UPDATE: Here's how class went:

My whiteboard including a guideline for one of the triangles and the rubric.

My smart board.  To save time I had examples of food chains in different biomes.  They had to choose two to draw on their pyramid.  They were allowed to switch animals around as long as the chain was still found in nature.

My example pyramid.  One side had to be labeled like this.

The unfortunate friend of one of my students is going to be eaten by a lion!

I love these drawings.

The students really did a good job on this project.  I had a lot of good effort. 

Final product. 

My final thoughts:  This was a really good activity.  The kids were engaged, and even the kids who don't like coloring were into it.  I think the fact that it would be 3-dimensional in the end really bumped up the coolness factor for some of them.  There was only one student who was not motivated, but he was having an off day. All in all, good lesson.  

Food Web Online Activity

This is a great activity to do with your class.  It can be done as a group on the smart board, with kids coming up one at a time to make a connection––this is how we did it.  Or, if you have enough computers for all of the kids, it can be done individually.  There are review questions at the end, which, again, can be answered together as a class, or individually.  I'm really glad I found this.

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/explorer/ecosystems/be_an_explorer/map/foodweb_play.htm

You start with all of the animals separated. You drag the arrows towards the thing it eats.

Our final food web. You can move the circles around to make it easier to see. 

One last thing.  I like this a lot because you can see just how involved, complicated, and messy food webs are.  They really are like a spiders web, and can go multiple directions.  The kids see that even though they are making simple connections from one species to another, the result is a more complex system. 

Review Games

My kids often need a lot of review.

No, that's an understatement.

My kids always need A LOT of review.  A LOT of it.

If they don't review something over and over and over again, then they're not going to learn it. I don't know if that's because they're sped, or because the material is new (and let's face it, they don't have much science instruction in elementary school, so it's almost brand new when they start in middle school), or because of both factors.  Probably both.

So I'm always strangling myself trying to think of brand new ways to present the exact same material so they don't get bored of it.

_________________________________________________

Management Skills:

If kids are bored, they start engaging in all sorts of inappropriate behavior that leads to a non-functioning class. 

It's a sad, hard truth. 

_________________________________________________

Oh, wait!  You thought you'd actually be teaching when you signed up for this? 
Oh, no, no, no.  
You're there to entertain. 

_____________________________________________________________

At the beginning of the year when my seventh graders were learning the parts of the cell, I created a large concentration game that we played all together one day, and then I used as a fast finisher later on during that unit.  It worked great. (I'll post those cards up another day).

My eight graders are learning about waves right now.  They appeared to know the information pretty well, so I gave them a quiz on it. 

Find quiz here

 

You'll notice that on the actual document I have 4 versions of the same thing.  It helps to eliminate cheating.

Yeah . . . they didn't know it as well as I thought. So I'm now looking for ways to reteach them these things: crest, trough, amplitude, frequency, wavelength, amplitude = volume, frequency = pitch.  

I found this great website that listed a bunch of new review games that I hadn't heard of before.  You check out that website here.  I'm using their Trash Ball game on Monday, because my kids already love throwing crumpled paper across the room (unfortunately).  

Since there aren't very many terms and concepts that we're reviewing, I have multiple presentations of the same idea.  The items have points assigned to them, with recall being 1 point.  Highest points are 5 points.  Is it perfect?  No, but I doubt the kids will care.  They'll just like being able to earn points.  I'm going to have them all cut up and folded so the questions are chosen at random. 

To see my review questions, download here:

All of the questions cut up and ready to choose from. 

I was really proud of my students.  This class did an excellent job of giving honest attempts when answering the questions, and they were all involved.  I really feel like this did the job at reviewing concepts again in a fun way.

The final result. 

My second class that came in and I did this with didn't do as well, but that class has too much middle school drama in it.  Too bad.  They enjoyed it, but it didn't go as well as the first.  It really depends on your students and if they can handle the excitement of throwing a piece of paper into the trash (they act like it's the best thing they've ever been allowed to do!).

All in all, I'd do this game again.  It was easy to make and fun to do.