Category Archives: Uncategorized

The National Science Teaching Association (NSTA) is offering a number of free opportunities for you to make science real for your students! Here are a few of the offerings.

Grades K–12

Endurance22 Virtual Exchange Expedition

Reach the World, in partnership with the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, invites teachers and K–12 students to participate in the Endurance22 Expedition to Antarctica, a virtual exchange expedition. The expedition will search for Sir Ernest Shackleton’s sunken ship, Endurance, the world’s most famous undiscovered shipwreck. Classrooms will board (virtually) the South African icebreaker Agulhas II and travel across the remote Weddell Sea to learn about polar navigation, weather and climate, ocean dynamics, Antarctic geography, and ice in its many forms. 

Alexa for Astronauts Virtual Public Tours
 
In the Alexa for Astronauts program, students become virtual crew members as Alexa heads to the Moon on NASA’s Artemis I. Teachers and students of grades four and higher can join a free, interactive virtual tour, live from Johnson Space Center this spring, as Artemis I takes flight to the Moon. Students will learn how to program their own Alexa skills that could help astronauts solve problems in space and communities at home.

STEM Resources From NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory 

In 2021, the education team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California added nearly 80 new space-related science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) resources to their online catalog of lessons, activities, articles, and videos for K–12 educators, students, and families. The resources introduce learners to NASA’s latest missions exploring Earth, the Moon, Mars, asteroids, the solar system, and the universe beyond and generate interest in space exploration.

NASA JPL Teach Resource Database

NASA’s JPL has a large database of high-quality K–12 space education resources: classroom activities, demonstrations, videos, and more.

Elementary

Project Playbook: Educator Edition

Looking for projects to encourage STEM exploration among K–5 students? Annenberg Learner’s Project Playbook: Educator Edition offers lesson plans to facilitate nearly 40 student inquiry projects and provides teachers with everything they need to support students in conducting science explorations to make sense of the world.

For more freebies, go to https://bit.ly/3IfNqGy.

ENJOY!!

Teaching Comprehension can be tricky! Teaching comprehension to young readers truly builds the foundation of their success, not just in reading but in their educational career. This method may surprise you and the results are fantastic! Students not only fully understand comprehension strategies but they incorporate them independently as well!

Here’s a step-by-step formula on how to break down and teach each skill effectively, including:

– Pre-assessments for each strategy

– Scope & sequence charts that show exactly where your students should be during their reading journey

– Graphic organizers so students can see connections between ideas

– Writing prompts that target different types of text structures (cause/effect, compare/contrast, etc.)

-And more…

Always looking for new ideas? Give it a try, good luck! https://bit.ly/3zSzxLc.

As teachers, being able to build a relationship with each child in the classroom so as to be able to motivate them to learn requires great skill. I believe that the teacher’s knowledge of age-appropriate content is only half the battle. The other half is being able to read the child’s present mental status and communicate the information in exciting and age-appropriate language.

Using Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligence theory, The teacher needs to have dominant interpersonal and communication intelligences. Those are what they need each and every day.

Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences are:

• People Smart (interpersonal intelligence)
• Word Smart (linguistic intelligence)
• Math Smart (numerical/reasoning/logic intelligence)
• Physically Smart (kinesthetic intelligence)
• Music Smart (musical intelligence)
• Self Smart (intrapersonal intelligence)

Over the years, I toyed with the idea of giving teaching candidates the Myers–Briggs Personality Test. There is a short version online. You may disagree, but I always thought my teachers should be E, N, F, J!

Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I),

Sensing (S) or Intuition (N),

Thinking (T) or Feeling (F),

and Judging (J) or Perceiving (P).

There is a new paper out titled Understanding Body Language by Edward C. Blanchard (https://bit.ly/3EYFjfk) and it occurred to me that teachers sure could use more assistance understanding their students. It states,

“There are many forms of communication and sometimes a person’s body
language can actually indicate more things than the spoken word.
Learning to understand body language can be very beneficial both in
the work environment as well as on a more personal front.”

Teaching is emotional, teaching is relationship building, maybe this can help us better understand our students.

When COVID19 started, the college at which I teach went to teaching online. I had to go out and purchase a white marker board in order to teach virtually from my bedroom. Although the pandemic is not over, we are now back on campus and teaching in person. But should we go back to virtual, I will definitely look at this system which I just saw advertised. bit.ly/3zLMHrN.

Need something from Amazon.com? Save here with this link!

Share resources, assign lessons and lead workshops directly from your Miro board using presentation mode.

Evaluate and adjust with easy sharing, commenting, and linking — plus, an endless canvas for iteration.

The online whiteboard for remote collaboration!

Bring your team together, no matter where they work!

Built-in collaboration! Keep everything on track with tools like chat, comments, sticky notes, and video, which make communication and co-creation simple.

Make meetings more inclusive, engaging, and fun with icebreakers, voting, and a timer for group activities.

Ideate with your team in real-time or asynchronously using sticky notes, frameworks, mind maps, and more.

Teachers make a lot of decisions every day. From the mundane of who is first in the line to the most important of who passes to the next grade. Most of the decisions are about details, and our day is the sum of all the thousand little decisions we make and these decisions have a huge impact on our daily happiness and success. Yet most of us never question whether our decision-making process is sound or not. It seems to me that in order to have a successful day, one where the students learn and are joyful, we must have a decision-making protocol that we go to throughout the day.

So here are 28 common decision making mistakes to avoid, by Frank Sonnenberg:

1 Shoot from the hip. Failing to consider relevant information.
2 Yesterday’s news. Basing decisions on outdated information.
3 Define the problem. Losing sight of the key objectives.
4 Learn your lesson. Failing to apply lessons learned from previous experiences.
5 To-do versus must-do. Addressing low-priority activities just to check off items.
6 Emotions get the better of you. Making important decisions in a poor frame of mind.
7 False assumptions. Failing to consider personal bias or inexperience.
8 Frame of reference. Making decisions in a vacuum.
9 Analysis paralysis. Waiting for every piece of information before making a decision.
10 Garbage in. Relying on sources with poor credibility.
11 Fear the worst. Avoiding a decision out of fear of making a mistake.
12 Band-aid solutions. Making a quick fix rather than addressing the root cause.
13 Ego. Failing to request or consider input from people in the know.
14 Take the good with the bad. Failing to view the downside as well as the upside.
15 Jump the gun. Selecting the first option rather than exploring alternatives.
16 Plunging in. Rushing to judgment without understanding the ramifications.
17 Piecemeal. Optimizing a single component at the expense of the whole.
18 Fixed focus. Failing to account for a changing landscape.
19 It’s all in the details. Giving inadequate thought to implementation.
20 Silver bullet. Doing what’s easy rather than what’s best.
21 Overly complex. Making implementation overly complicated.
22 Out of sight. Failing to consider opportunity costs.
23 Deer in headlights. Postponing decisions until tomorrow.
24 Cover your behind. Making decisions merely to justify previous actions.
25 Neglecting your values. Selling your soul rather than doing what’s right.
26 Forest and trees. Getting caught up in the details while missing the
big picture.
27 Looking over your shoulder. Spending more time second-guessing
decisions than moving forward.
28 Bury your head in the sand. Avoiding reality.

Teachers have all been stuck in a negative cycle of procrastination when faced with large, difficult, or time-consuming tasks. Facing the task head-on seems too daunting and can provoke feelings of anxiety, so we instead put it off for later and focus on other less-urgent items. As the deadline approaches, we become even more anxious, last minute panic, compounding procrastination further.

Aside from the obvious downside of missing a deadline, procrastination comes at our own expense by preventing us from using our time efficiently. One way to prevent procrastination is by identifying your “power hours“—the blocks of time when you’re most productive—and arranging your demanding tasks for that time. For example, I personally find I’m most productive in the morning from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m., before the business of the day requires more of my attention. You can then save your least productive times for smaller, more mundane tasks, meetings, e-mails, and phone calls.

I use my power hours to write that letter to the parents about a controversial topic, design programs and prepare for the day. I should add here that I am also more productive on Monday and less on Friday. So all difficult conferences, meetings, and projects are scheduled for Monday and Tuesday, if possible.

I find that grading student papers and assessments require something between Monday and Friday energy level. Grading with grace and understanding requires more attention than I can give on a typical Friday. To know your specific idiosyncrasies in terms of energy level and attention span is to know and plan to give your very best to each and every student!

This is the heading from an ad on Facebook. Of course, they want teachers. Who else has the people skills to deal with children, parents, and administrators with grace? Who better to handle 100 different details expertly, to multi-task calmly, and complete all projects with creativity and professionalism. Of course, they want teachers! They use these skills in their classroom each and every day.

The number one job for the school principal is to put an exemplary teacher in every classroom. Teachers are the backbone of a great school. As such, you can’t just leave their recruitment and training to chance. Parents have every right to expect that their child will have an effective teacher each and every year. As President Barack Obama so aptly stated, “From the moment students enter a school, the most important factor in their success is not the color of their skin or the income of their parents, it’s the person standing at the front of the classroom.”

The principal can’t have a child’s teacher be a gamble from year to year. It is not acceptable for a student to have a good teacher one year and a poor teacher the next. A poor teacher can cause students to experience significant setbacks and they can make the job more difficult for the next teacher by creating significant learning gaps.

Statistics:

• 40 to 50 per cent of teachers leave within their first five years on the job.
• These relatively new teachers are leaving for a variety of reasons, but the most common reasons are: they feel burnt out, unsupported, frustrated and disillusioned.

So what can be done? Here are a few thoughts:

• All new teachers need a trusted friend/coach/mentor for at least the first two years. Someone to ask questions of, vent to, and rely on for a sympathetic ear. No reports to supervisors. The biggest challenge in the first few years is classroom management. They need someone who can tell them war stories of their own and give handy tips for specific situations. The coach must be someone who cares enough for the students and school to want to spend time being a friend and coach. And they really can’t accomplish all this and teach full time.
• Every teacher, but especially new teachers, should design a professional development plan with the guidance of the administration. In this plan should be yearly conferences, workshops, and/or seminars paid for by the school. Nothing motivates and excites a teacher more than a supervisor and school which is willing to invest in their teachers, the backbone of excellence of the school.
• Teachers need the tools necessary to be the very best they can be and that includes technology. The school should give their teachers a computer, laptop, or iPad. Anything they need to excite and motivate their students. And then give them the trainig necessary to enhance their classroom with that tecnology.
• Every school should have a curriculum/Innovation specialist. A person who stays in the know concerning all of the latest in educational pedogogy, especially technology related.  This specialist helps the teacher to reconceptualize, modernize, and optimize the curriculum. Bringing the latest in age-appropriate education to the teachers keeps them on top in their field which is best for their students.
• The pay scale and bonus schedule should reward lenghth of service. There needs to be rewards and celebrations for every five years a teacher stays at the school with a longterm service bonus at some appropriate number of years. Their efforts, caring, number of students taught, must be recognize as a wonderful and monumental event.
• The school administration needs to recognize the teacher’ scontributions to their students and the school and show them the appreciation they deserve.
• The school administration must show their teachers respect and treat them as professionals at all times. They also should demand that all school constituencies show the teachers appropriate respect. This respect and support of the school’s teachers must be part of the culture of the school and demanded of all constituencies.

Teachers have a plethora of details of which to keep track. With a classroom of 20 or more students, or over 100 students for a middle or high school teacher, the teacher has to prepare lesson plans for the class, prepare remediation for those struggling, enrichment for those who get it, and grade papers. Calendars are among the most essential productivity tool a teacher can use. Not only do calendars allow you to keep track of your time in general, but they also give you the ability to schedule all conferences, meetings, and all important events in advance. As a result, you get to prioritize your time better and can be more productive and organized as a whole.

Here is a link that rates the best calendar apps of 2021 from Qode Magazine; https://bit.ly/33YionG. It rates:

• Google Calendar

• Timepage

• TimeTree

• DigiCal

• Teamup

Good luck and remember, for every minute spent organizing, an hour is earned!

Educators, I know you have a lot to do so as to be a master teacher. We are information purveyors, counselors, graders, caregivers, and entertainers. And now we need to know about this technology stuff. Yes, we do need to know about this technology stuff. Students today are technology natives. They were raised using and intuitively understanding all these gadgets. Research has indicated that their brains are literally wired differently because of this technological environment in which they are being raised.

So, you also need to be fluent in technology so as to be able to excite and motivate your students to learn. Here is a source for you to check your tech skills. From The Journal, “20 Technology Skills Every Educator Should Have!” (https://bit.ly/3FBb9jD)

1. Word Processing Skills
2. Spreadsheets Skills
3. Database Skills
4. Electronic Presentation Skills
5. Web Navigation Skills
6. Web Site Design Skills
7. E-Mail Management Skills
8. Digital Cameras
9. Computer Network Knowledge Applicable to your School System
10. File Management & Windows Explorer Skills
11. Downloading Software From the Web (Knowledge including eBooks)
12. Installing Computer Software onto a Computer System
13. WebCT or Blackboard Teaching Skills
14. Videoconferencing skills
15. Computer-Related Storage Devices (Knowledge: disks, CDs, USB drives, zip disks, DVDs, etc.)
16. Scanner Knowledge
17. Knowledge of PDAs
18. Deep Web Knowledge
19. Educational Copyright Knowledge
20. Computer Security Knowledge

I was so saddened by the mass shooting which occurred at Oxford High School in Oxford Township, Michigan, on November 30, 2021. Four students were killed and seven people were injured, including a teacher. After my original shock, the questions that crossed my mind were why schools and why are the shooters usually boys?

Elementary schools are usually smaller, warm, and caring places. They are typically neighborhood schools with many local teachers, where everyone knows everyone else. The PTA meetings are full of interested parents who are supportive of the school. The parents know the teachers love their children almost as much as they do and are very generous at the holidays as a way of saying thank you for what you do.

Then when the children become of early adolescent age with all of the angst and drama that that age brings, what do we do, we put all of the neighborhood schools into one large middle school and then high school. We put all these young people together as they experience many changes, changes as they transition from childhood into young adulthood. These changes include physical, behavioral, cognitive, and emotional-social development. We put them all together when they need personal attention, an adult who cares about them and serves as a role model. This does not make sense to me. I believe that middle school is when they need a smaller environment with close adult relationships. So some of the students get lost in the crowd, boys especially.

By the numbers since January 2000 (Columbine shooting was in April of 1999):

• approximately 317 school shootings
• an average of one school shooting every 24 days
• approximately 312 dead
• approximately 580 injured

Too many males don’t know how to cry. They don’t know how to express their feelings. They don’t know how to say I’m sorry! “All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong and repairs the evil.” Sophocles.

Schools are tough places. Students tease each other, call each other mean names, make fun of each other, and laugh at each other. This goes on and on and the pecking order is decided, the ins and the outs. Girls handle this differently than boys. Whereas girls tend to express their emotions, yell, scream, and cry. Boys have been taught to be the strong silent type, like John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and James Bond. As Psychology Today states, “…consider that some of our most destructive societal problems—like wars, homicide, and other violent crime—result from extreme cases of male aggression and hyper-competitiveness.”

Where are the stoic and emotionally bottled-up boys, schools! Who explodes having had enough, boys. So parents and teachers, take care of all of your students, care for them, ask if they are OK, just listen to them, but especially the boys. Let’s head this off, NOW! The gun access is another topic altogether. Love your children/students and listen to them cry out before they get a gun.