Testing You - Testing Me

Last week, the eighth grade had a quiz about seasons. Tomorrow, the seventh grade has a test on the first part of Populations and Ecosystems.

Why do we have tests and quizzes?

Is it to torture you?

Is it because we’re supposed too?

Is it just something we do?

The answers are; no, no and no.

Teachers need assessments for two big reasons:

1. To assess whether you have learned the material,
2. To assess whether we have taught the material in a way that you can understand.

If everyone does well on an assessment, then we can safely assume that we have taught and you have learned the material. In this case, everyone goes away happy.

If most students do well, then we have some work do to with the ones who did not do well. Was it a failure in teaching? Was it a failure on the student’s part to learn the material or prepare for the test? In this case, most students go away happy and the teacher needs to figure out what went wrong. Some students may have some extra work to do to catch up.

If very few students do well, then we might have a problem with the way the material was taught.  Now, the teacher needs to dig in and figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.  Sometimes we reteach the material, sometimes we conclude that the problem is on the student end and take appropriate action based on this decision.

I have had cases where I concluded I needed to reteach the content in a different way - like the extra work many of our eighth graders did after the seasons quiz. I have also had cases where I concluded that the students were not doing their work and were not even trying to learn the material, like our first test of the year in the seventh grade. 

One more thing, as much as you may dislike having to take a 30 minute test/quiz, your teacher has had to write that assessment, and then will have to grade 50+ copies of it. 

Trust me, the torture is not taking the test, it’s grading it!

The Peanut Butter Wars

There is a war happening in our classroom. 

Battles rage, unseen in the crevices and corners of our room. 

Most of the action happens at night or on the weekends but, even though we can not see or hear it during school, day-by-day the war proceeds.

My weapons are simple: Peanut Butter and traps.

So far the mice are winning, but they have taken losses.

Every morning I check my traps and, usually, the peanut butter is gone and the traps have not been sprung. Clever little rodents these mice are…

Every few days, however, the mice have another casualty - five at last count.

To be fair, the war pales in comparison to last year’s epic battles. During the 2017-2018 school year, I trapped 11 mice. If I sat in my room quietly, I would often see them scurrying between the lab tables. I even saw one as I was teaching a class. They were a brave lot.

It’s a never-ending struggle for supremacy. The humans bring tasty snack foods and diabolically simple, yet effective traps. The mice bring stealth and the ability to wriggle though impossibly small openings. 

As the weather warms, the mice will begin to migrate back outside where the hawks, owls, and foxes will pick up the gauntlet. Just one more reason to look forward to Spring, and the end of this dreadful conflict.

Red Ink

I order them by the box - twelve at a time. This year, I had to order a second box - and it’s only March!

I’m going through red pens at an alarming rate. 

Just to be clear, I don’t lose pens like you folks lose pencils, books, erasers, glue sticks and homework assignments, I use them up. I wear them out. I take all that red ink and push it onto your work. 

So many red pens. 

I sincerely hope you take the time to read my comments, questions and observations on your work, but I suspect most of you just look at the grade and nothing else. 

I think this because returned work goes into your hands and then hits the recycling bin at supersonic speed. 

Am I wasting all my red ink?

I don’t think so, I do see some of my scholars reading my feedback. 

Maybe my comments will make a difference. 

Maybe my questions will prompt some of you to think about your work a little more deeply. 

Maybe some of you will take your work home and show your parents what you’re learning in science. 

Maybe I should just have Amazon automatically deliver me a new box of red pens every three months. 

Pandameter - A Device for Measuring Panda Bears

The vocabulary in science can be difficult. 

It’s an area where students tell me they have their greatest difficulties. Over the course of two years, grades 7 and 8, you will learn about 200 vocabulary words. Some of which you will probably never use outside a science classroom. 

I get it and I’m trying to help. 

One of the things science teachers are encouraged to do is to post the vocabulary words on the wall. I guess the thinking is, if they are in plain sight all the time, you will become accustomed to seeing them and feel more comfortable using them.

I do not think this is an effective way to teach vocabulary and I have evidence to support my opinion. 

When I started to hang up the weather unit vocab words, I was seriously doubting the value of the word wall. So, I devised a simple test. I created a science-sounding word and hung it up with all the other legit vocabulary words.

Pandameter.

That’s my evidence. It’s my made-up, science-sounding word. I figured if I hung up a word we never learned, that sounded a little intriguing, then someone would ask. 

Over the course of two months, with that word hanging near the center of my classroom…not one seventh grader asked about it. (Of course this may say something about the overall curiosity of this particular group of 7th graders, but that topic is for another blog post altogether)

The only person who ever did ask, was a sharp-eyed 8th grader, and none of the vocabulary words in the room had anything to do with what he was studying. 

So, that’s the end of the word wall for me. Instead, I will continue to put vocabulary words on my Do Now’s and provide other ways to help you learn and use these very special words. 

Wait, ’til next year….my favorite middle school vocab word is coming: syzygy

Writing for Fun and Profit

I love that the eighth grade is doing a unit on journalism. 

For about six years, my wife and I owned and operated a newspaper publishing company.  We had several publications. We did most of the writing ourselves but also had freelancers and columnists. It was a great experience and when we think back to those days, we are proud of our work.

I’ve also done a lot of freelance writing for newspapers and magazines. (See, I really have had a million jobs over the years.) I’ve been published in the Boston Globe, was a regular contributor to the Providence Journal and other newspapers. I’ve written for magazines like Air & Space Smithsonian, Aviation History, Block Island Magazine, Sea Classics and others.

I enjoy writing and love the research that goes into it. Writing allowed me to explore topics that interested me, meet some really interesting people, and have some really cool experiences.

One of my articles, a piece about the USS Albacore (An experimental submarine designed and operated by the US Navy in the 1950’s and 1960’s) was cited in a NASA book about the history of wind tunnels. It’s obscure, but it’s cool to be mentioned in a NASA publication. 

I wrote an article for the Boston Globe about the USS Massachusetts. The battleship Massachusetts fought in World War II and is now a museum ship in Fall River. I visited the ship and was given a top-to-bottom tour by the commander. The article focused on the efforts to get the state to pay for much-needed repairs. 

Later, when the money had been approved and the ship was being repaired, I wrote another article about the restoration efforts. It was the coolest thing to walk underneath a huge battleship that was out of the water. That story was published in Sea Classics magazine.

For me, the best part about being a freelance writer, was choosing the topics I wanted to research and write about. It was fun, interesting and, best of all, I got paid to do it.

If you want to know more, ask me about the book that was written about me and my work in researching a sunken Nazi U-boat that was discovered in a place it should not have been.

Are You Ready for Weather?

Starting on Monday, December 3rd the 7th grade will begin a 13-week study of Weather and Water and it’s just in time for some interesting weather. 

On Friday, December 21st, fall ends and winter begins. It’s some of the most severe and interesting weather of the whole year and it aligns with our weather unit really well. 

This coming week, I will be mounting a weather station on the roof near our classroom so we can use super-local data in our studies. The weather station will provide temperature, humidity, windspeed, wind direction and rainfall. 

We will be tracking all this data in our science notebooks. Later, we will analyze the data to support our understanding of seasons. 

Now, if we can avoid a ridiculous number of snow days this winter, we’ll be able to make great progress in this unit. I know a lot of student appreciate snow days, but last year we had so many, we were in school until the very end of June - ugh.

Be Prepared

The Bartlett Community Partnership School is not like most other schools. If you’re one of our many students who has been here since kindergarten, then you might not appreciate how different this school is from others.

First off, most schools were not designed by Architectural Mazes Limited, the Bartlett was.

I have advocated for giving new students a bag of bread crumbs so they can find their way back to the door at the end of the day. Seriously, is the front door really on the third floor?  And, how do you explain a “ramp level?”

Second; wear light clothing all year long. There are days when the heat just won’t quit. Between the heating system working with a vengeance, and many of the classrooms getting direct sun all day long, we could probably bake cupcakes in some of the classrooms. And, it’s totally unpredictable. Some days start off nice and comfortable only to turn into scorching hot Sahara-like conditions. You just never know.

Next; Wear heavy clothing on top of your light clothing. I know it’ll feel a little bulky, but it’s totally worth it. That unpredictable thing works both ways - sometimes it feels like you’re sitting inside a pizza oven, and sometimes it’s so cold you kind of expect a penguin to waddle up to you. You just never know, so you have to be prepared for anything. You can always take your hoodie off and stuff it in your locker, but you can’t run home to get it at 10am.

Also, if you plan to wash your hands, and with an average of 1.2 bathroom trips per student per hour, you should be washing your hands multiple times per day, be prepared for either scalding hot steam or ice cubes coming out of the tap. I am exaggerating, but the same folks who designed our random temperature heating system, must have also designed our random temperature plumbing system. You never know what you’re going to get. Some days we have nice, hot water, other days none…no hot water at all. You just never know, so you have to be prepared for anything. 

Finally, be ready for the unexpected. Like days when a water pipe breaks and we don’t have any water. Or the annual mouse infestation that begins as the weather cools. You just never know what’s going to happen next.

Plan ahead.

Be prepared.

Bring anything you could possibly need. 

Don’t be surprised when the unexpected happens, just go with it.