Mo Physics Mo Problems

It takes a special type of educator to attend a conference in June. Many teachers have only been out of school for a couple of days. These are professionals who thrive on reflecting on their practice and gaining new ideas to improve their practice. These are the teachers who look at the world and see ideas that they can bring into the classroom tomorrow. These are the type of educators who attend University School of Milwaukee Summer Spark. This is my second year attending USM Summer Spark and I am amazed at the talent that they bring in to share out at sessions. With such an engaged groups of educators, I imagine it is one hell of a draw. Angela Maiers gave a rousing keynote focusing on the connections we make with learners and making them realize they matter. While there were many takeaways, one that stuck with me was setting up a structure to make every student in the classroom feel awesome at least once a week. The idea of recognizing 5 students from my classes a day in a person

I have greatly enjoyed Matt Miller’s Ditch Series of Books. On Friday, the 3rd in the series was released Don’t Ditch that Tech. It focuses on using technology to assist in differentiation in the classroom. Matt collaborated with Nate and Angie Ridgeway on this book. I finished the book very quickly. But is not the kind of book you will read once and put away. It will be a guide that I will continue to come back as I consider lesson design and implementation of technology. I appreciate that Matt, Nate, and Angie practice what they preach in this book. In a book about differentiation, they don’t attempt to present a one size fits all model. The book itself understands that teachers have different resources and that each lesson differs in what it asks the teacher and learner to be responsible for. The book identifies different models of technology implementation in schools. These range from situations in which schools have carts or labs which house the technology to be used to Bring

When I attended PBL world 4 years ago, I was introduced to the idea of a project exhibition night. A night for students to share their learning beyond the classroom and with the greater school community. It was a night that wasn’t for grading. It truly meant for sharing of work. This week, we held our 6th project expo night. This event was directly inspired by the ideas I heard at PBL world back in 2015. I am proud of a lot of things that I’ve been able to implement in my classroom, and this is near the top of the list. One of the main reasons is the simple visual that one will see when they walk into the expo. Students talking about their work to parents. Open houses and science fairs are things that I am used to seeing at the elementary level. At the high school level, parents are rarely invited to events. Outside of athletics, these events tend to be performances by the arts. The other event the parents attend to learn about academic performance is parent teacher conferences. We

I have been slowly trying to implement the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) into my classroom. Our new Wisconsin State Science Standards were designed with the NGSS in mind. They align very well. So please forgive me if my language focuses on the NGSS in this post. In a previous post I discussed tools for dealing with models in science class. This post will focus on Planning and Carrying Out Investigations. As the name indicates, there are two major components to this practice 1) planning investigations 2) conducting investigations. Before looking closer at each aspect, we need to look at the purpose of investigations in science and engineering. To quote the practice according to Appendix F of the Next Generation Science Standards: Scientific investigations may be undertaken to describe a phenomenon, or to test a theory or model for how the world works. The purpose of engineering investigations might be to find out how to fix or improve the functioning of a technological sy

Over the past year, I have been gradually working to implement the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) into my classroom. Our new Wisconsin State Science Standards were designed with the NGSS in mind. They align very well, so please forgive me if my language focuses on the NGSS in this post. As I design lessons aligned the standards, I am considering to the skills students will be implementing that carry across multiple units. This relates to the Science and Engineering Practices contained in the standards . I am looking at the technology tools that can be used to leverage these practices. While there are 8 different practices and I hope to delve into each one and the technology tools that can help learners in each, this post will only focus on one practice. That practice is Developing and Using Models . As the name indicates, there are two major components to this practice 1) developing models 2) using models. Before looking closer at each one, we need to look at how a model is

As a teacher, I am always looking for highly engaging activities. It takes time, though, to craft ones that can be seen to hit the standards of a course. Or, maybe it takes a little time to realize that the skills students are being asked to employ are in the standards. It is just a matter of finding ways to make this learning visible. This week, we had the finals of the Sphero Chariot Challenge. Students designed and built Chariots for Spheros. They then programmed them to travel a short course with a couple of turns. While this culminating activity was a great driver for many of the students, the results of this race did not determine any grade. The content and skills were addressed along the journey to the end. At the end of last year, my co-teacher Andelee Espinosa and I did a maker project in our Fabrication Lab involving Sphero Chariots.   Read here post on the activity here.   I was excited to have the opportunity to complete this project again the last month. I mad