Next year

I would love to teaching the Modeling Physics curriculum, but I've not been able to convince my district to spring for training. I enjoyed Stephen Murray's efforts, but they don't fit me. (I will definitely continue to use them and await all updates for his labs which are great inquiry.) I need to do something that meets my students needs for stimulation and my need for structure so that I can adjust and build appropriately. 

AH-HA MOMENT #1
If students are to be generally college ready, they need general college skills 

At the end of the year, my kids behaved (very) poorly during while I was out for training. As a result, the project they were assigned was scrapped for an outlining assignment. An exceptionally large portion of the students did not know how to do this. Additionally, given a short informational essay, about half got it returned  for copying. They did not understand (or professed to not understand) that listing a web site did not give them license to copy whatever they wanted from that website without any citation other than the works cited page.

Implemenation: 

• Regular text outlining
• Regular writing via abstracts and article summaries. (I would love an assist on this if you have any ideas.)

AH-HA MOMENT #2
Problem-solving mastery requires self-guidance
OK, this is less about a particular moment than general frustration at the amount of hand-holding a bunch of high-school juniors appear to require.

Implementation:

• Goal-less problems, a la Kelly O'Shea
• Projects vs. Labs

AH-HA MOMENT #3
It's OK to just jump into a project.
After testing this year, I did a summative project for circuits - building an electric house. It was a blast and I really think the students learned a lot. However, it reinforced the need for time. And let's face it, I am still learning how to bring my students along at a fast(er) pace. The death of CScope might help with this. :)

Implementation:

• Build projects around units not as end-caps to them. (Of course, this means finding good project fits.)

Hello, summer

I did summer school, again, this year. As a result, my summer vacation didn't actually start until June 28. I've spent the last week engaging in relatively sloth-like behavior, shunting aside anything remotely resembling intellectual stimulation (or cleaning!). But that doesn't work for long. My brain keeps popping up ideas and questions as the new year approaches. 

(Seriously, Facebook. Did you need to post an ad for a back-to-school sweepstakes in June?!?!)

But before I get into that, I must share with you a cool blog find from Pedagoge Padawan. The author has succeeded in one of those summer organization projects we all have (and generally forget): He has organized his links. Not only that, he's done so through my favorite organization tool, Evernote. Even better? He's shared with us a resource of topical links at we can further share with our students. (and some teacher links, too.) Try it, I think you'll like it.

I am entering my fourth year teaching high school physics.In reflection, there was not much structure to my first two year's teaching. It was more about putting one foot in front of another. I look back, and it's a bit of a blur of reinventing the wheel every time. At the start of 2012-13, I had a brief, heady flirtation with SBG for my regular classes and Stephen Murray's scaffolded worksheet approach. It all ended during pre-year training when all teachers were informed that it was to be all CScope, all the time. If you want to know how that ends, we need margaritas. Suffice it to say, CScope is (for) now banned across Texas. (For non-Texas teachers: CScope is/was a vertically/horizontally aligned (state) K-12 curriculum.)*

I've made it through this year, and the others, a paper success with 95+% of students passing the state comprehensive science exam. [Even 100% of my physics students this year - the last, phase-out year of TAKS. ;) ] But we all know that those scores don't mean much and are built on the successes of previous teachers. 

But now, CScope is gone.  I am in the enviable position of just being able to teach. Until the year starts, I have no testing for which to prepare and the only alignment I'm concerned about is what comes to me. That said, there are standards and goals, but that outside pressure is off. And I can focus on building something of substance, on teaching my students physics and, more importantly, preparing them for college and life.

*Do you have any idea how many times I've deleted part of this paragraph to eliminate personal opinions on that curriculum?