This I Believe, 2012

So, I’ve been thinking about our recent “This I Believe” unit. I tried to develop it into a collaborative projectand a few other classes signed up, but it didn’t get as much traction as I had hoped. There’s always next year. Anyway, I forged ahead myself. I teach in a classroom that is usually self-contained. [...]

Bell Labs and School

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about the article in The New York Times from February 23rd: ”True Innovation“. Jon Gertner is the author of a forthcoming book about Bell Labs called The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation and this was a kind of preview. There was plenty of detail [...]

An Idea

So, I’ve been thinking about EduCon and conferences. EduCon is always in Philadelphia at SLA. I live in the area and can get there easily. So, even if not every session I attend is earth shattering, and really that is a lot to expect, it’s worth it to me for a number of reasons: ideas, [...]

Phew!

So, I’ve been thinking about EduCon, which was last weekend at Science Leadership Academy (SLA) in Philadelphia. This is the third year that I have attended. This year I not only attended, I presented. I didn’t do this alone; I’m much too much of a chicken for that. Hadley Ferguson (@Hadleyjf), Philip Cummings (@Philip_Cummings), and I were a [...]

#5thchat to the Rescue

So, I wasn’t thinking about having a super interesting evening when I got home from school on Tuesday. Honestly, I had a frustrating day and might have been ready to wallow in it, just a little. I figured I wouldn’t participate in #5thchat on Twitter because I just wasn’t in the mood. (If you are [...]

Trying out something I learned over the summer

So, I’ve been thinking about the strategies that I learned in my 2 days of reading PD at the end of the school year last year. One of the strategies that our facilitator shared with us was having students take mind map type notes as they read in social studies. Although our facilitator talked about [...]

Put That Post-it on the Wall

So, I’ve been thinking about how my students organize information. We have practiced a couple of ways to gather information and then manipulated it this way and that. We have worked on this both formally and informally. So, I was interested to see what groups of students would do with this assignment: Note: I had [...]

Bringing in the Experts

So, I’ve been thinking and writing about seating arrangement a lot this year. Just on the off-chance that you didn’t catch those earlier posts, I’ll summarize quickly. I did some reading over the summer about seating and then bought tables from IKEA that were not only inexpensive, but easily move around the room. Then, even [...]

What Makes a Good Conference Session?

So, I’ve been thinking about EduCon again and sessions in general. What makes a workshop, session, speaker good? I recall reading a description of one reviewer’s process of reviewing cookbooks. This reviewer and cook was going to be on a panel discussion about several cookbooks. He described a conversation he had with another panelist in [...]

Snow Day Antics

So, I’ve been thinking about the snow day we had yesterday several weeks ago now. We even got the call pretty early in the evening so it was extra-super-duper nice. I put away all school stuff  and read a book. On the actual snow day itself I was busy with my personal kids who also [...]