1) We had a monthly meeting at Fowler, where I had my second round of Castlelearning Training. I created an energy/insolation review assignment (33 multiple choice regents questions), and will assign it to students as a review homework assignment on Monday. It will be due by next Tuesday (the day before the test), so that I cannot determine which concepts (if any) should be reviewed before the exam. The classmarker quiz was a double-edged sword. The good news is that the class average was an 85%. The bad news is that less than 50% of students took the quiz despite constant reminders. The snow days may have had something to do with the lack of quiz takers.
ESF students went to the computer lab and created population pyramids (using excel and powerpoint) and emailed me their projects. Students did well with this assignment, and it was good practice for compiling and organizing data for their independent research projects.
2) The hands-on lab activities worked very well for my Earth Science students this week. Students really seemed to grasp the concepts after having hands-on experiences. Students also created graphs using their own data, and made meaningful interpretations of the data when answering the lab questions.
3) Because of the snow days and half day, Block 1 has fallen 2 classes behind Blocks 3 and 4. I will need to establish a class period this week to catch up block 1, and they need to finish graphs from 2 labs. The directions for the ESF lab (population pyramids) were based on microsoft office's word program from 2003. I need to redesign them based on office '07, to match the computers in the computer lab.
4) We had the annual Corcoran Christmas party at Ms. Root's house on Friday. It was fun to hang out with colleagues outside of work. The State Education Department will be conducting a JIT review at Corcoran this week in order to provide suggestions for how our school can be re-designed and improved. I was selected to be interviewed by the reviewers. I look forward to participating in this constructive process, but still find it nerve-racking and discouraging that the general trend seems to be placing "blame" on teachers for all educational problems. Other than that, we have been enjoying the record-setting wintery weather. Syracuse was hammered by more than 3 feet of lake effect snow last week.
5) "I like your sweatshop" - comment from student, taken as a compliment on my sweater
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