First of all, I know that many of you reading this post will wish you had my two classroom problem. It’s not a huge issue – it’s more about the best use of space. Here’s some background on the problem.

Last year, my school split in two. We went from having over 2,700 students to less than 1,100 students. It was a huge change. We also had a brand new school building built to hold around 1,800 students. That left us with many empty classrooms. (I know what you’re thinking – what a fantastic problem to have.) Well, my principal made the decision to give all science teachers two classrooms. Our two rooms have an adjoining door. One is a middle school science lab (which means it has sinks and lab tables), and the other is a regular classroom (no sinks, and individual desks and chairs).

Here is my problem. I am not happy with the way I used the space last year. We spent to little time in the lab and way too much time in the classroom. I want to spend more time in the lab this year. In fact, I want the lab to be our primary place for class. There are a couple of reasons for this. Practically, I need to use this space more because when I no longer have two classrooms, this is the one I will keep. With regards to instruction, it seems better practice to have my students in the lab more. It puts them into the culture of being a scientist. Many times last year we completed some activities in the regular classroom and not the lab. They were not traditionally labs and so did not need to be conducted in that environment. Students had a more difficult time realizing they were still doing science. Later in the year, we spent more time in the lab, and student engagement seemed to increase just because of where we were.

So my problem for this year is – how do I best use this secondary classroom space? I’m thinking of using the lab almost daily and breaking out in the regular classroom on the following occasions:

• during assessments (individual desks make for easier monitoring)
• break out groups (sometimes we just need to spread out into two rooms when doing some projects – sometimes even into the hallways)
• a student escape (we all get overwhelmed by people be around us too much – it’s nice to have a close spot to get away)
• a lounge area (a place for students to work on their e-portfolios, read a book, or work quietly on their own)

I think this will make the use of the space I have work better. I’m not sure though – it’s all a bit of trial and error. So, if you had two classroom spaces, how would you use them?

I am trying to reinvent my class for next year – especially the first week of school. Here is an outline of what I did last year on the first five days of school:

1. Day 1 – Classroom expectations, basic overview of what is covered in the course
2. Day 2 – Lesson on observations, inferences, predictions, classifications, models and simulations, and communication in science
3. Day 3 – Set up science notebook
4. Day 4 – Lab safety
5. Day 5 – Measurements in science (metric system)

Now there is nothing inherently bad about the way I presented the information, but it was not entirely exciting – and it definitely was not inquiry based. I have realized that over the past few years my first week of school has been a lot about giving information. Would it not be better if students could discover this information instead?

The other thing that I want to improve is the content that I cover over the first few weeks of school. I got myself stuck in a rut of teaching students science process skills in isolation. I know that many other teachers in my school do the same. We assume that students come to us from elementary school and do not have the skills necessary to be successful in science without us laying a foundation the first week. Perhaps that is true – but I know that the science programs in our feeder schools are fantastic. Additionally, it seems these skills would be better honed through a more practical integration with the content.

I’m still in the initial planning stages of what I want to do to make the first week more inquiry focused. I also know I still do need to cover important information that sets up the classroom culture. However, I have an idea based on a lab I did several years ago and the mystery lesson strategy I learned during my gifted endorsement class.

The idea is to have rocks set out around the lab and clues also strewn around that would help students to identify the rocks. However, the clues would utilize terminology the students may not be familiar with. Also some of the clues would have information about lab tests that would need to be conducted to help in the identification process.

When students enter the classroom, they would be greeted as rock experts who have arrived just in time to help me sort out the rock mess. We would have some precursory introductions, and then we would take a look at the rocks and the clues. Over the course of the first day, students would brainstorm a list of things they need to know and do in order to solve the rock mess. We would also discuss what we would need to conduct some of the tests. This could bring in lab safety – and hopefully get students excited about getting their lab safety contracts signed in order to participate in the testing. As the week progressed, we would also discuss how to gather information and keep it organized – leading to our science notebooks.

What I’ve brainstormed so far should help introduce the lab safety, inquiry, and science notebooks. Some things it does not address are class policies, our web based portfolio project, and the class jobs I’m hoping to incorporate. I am sure I will figure out a way to address these during that first week with some more thought.

I am excited about turning my class upside down and doing something totally different. I think this will help establish a culture of inquiry, as well as curiosity and creativity, from the first day. It should also make the class more engaging and effective. As I finalize the lessons, I will be sure to share them.

What are your thoughts? Have you done anything like this before? How well did it work? What am missing? I look forward to hearing your thoughts as well!

I love summer break. (I am not so big on the summer heat, though!) My days are relatively carefree compared to the school year, and I feel like I can totally re-invent my classroom for the following year. I love to change things up, and my classroom is never the same from year to year. (My students can tell you the desks are also rarely in the same place from month to month.) I guess what I love is that feeling of hopeful anticipation.

The other thing I love about summer is how unchained to a calendar I become. During the school year I am so driven my calendars: school events, instructional calendar, yearbook deadlines, time left in the class period – there is so much to accomplish. Every day I write the date on the board for the kids, and as the days pass, I feel like I am slightly enslaved to the rapid pace of the school year. It’s so nice to slow down in the summer and not worry about what day it is on the calendar – or making sure I cover a particular topic in a given amount of time.

I love having time to read a book, catch up on Twitter, play with my puppy, or just stare out the window for a while. It’s nice to be able to forget what time of day it is – and even what day of the week it is. This morning when I got up I knew it was Wednesday, but at some point during the day I convinced myself it was Thursday before finally realizing it actually is Wednesday. That only happens in the summer.

Ahh – the carefree days of summer. It’s a great time to recharge my batteries for next school year!

This year I was part of a small volunteer group of teachers who met monthly to discuss technology issues and ideas that work in the classroom. Towards the end of the year, we brainstormed ways to make this an ongoing effort next school year doing something we could then share with the remainder of the school the following year.

We decided to embark on web based portfolios for our students. All of the teachers in our group are already using technology in a variety of ways in the classroom, and we decided this would be a great way to pool all the projects and work samples together. We even received approval from our administration to make this a committee – which we are calling IDEA (Innovative Design and Emerging Applications). We plan to pilot using web based portfolios with our students in the upcoming school year (2010-2011) in order to present it to the entire faculty to incorporate during the 2011-2012 school year.

The great thing is there is choice involved for each individual teacher with regards to what types of applications to use, projects to assign, and even technology used to host the web based portfolio. We did work together on writing a parent information letter explaining the program generally.

I am extremely excited about embarking on this journey. It’s a step closer to having a paperless classroom, and I hope it will cut down tremendously on my need for paper this year. Plus, I see this as being very handy for students since it’s a lot more difficult to lose a web portfolio than it is to lose loose papers to the backpack black hole!

So now I am trying to decide how students will host their portfolios. The first thing I need to decide is if every student needs to have the exact same format – for example all blogs or all wikis. Once that is decided, the second thing I need to determine is where we will host our portfolios. I am toying with the idea of having blogs and/or wikis for student portfolios hosted through my web site. Each month, I use a tiny fraction of my bandwidth, and I am using 742.3 of 35,000 MB of storage. That should give me plenty of storage space for 105-115 student blogs or wikis. The downside to using my own space is that I would not be able to host the portfolios indefinitely. Being able to access a student’s portfolio long after he/she has left sixth grade is one of the ideals of the project, so if students did decide to keep their work (and hopefully they would want it), they would need to migrate. That seems like way too much work!

So then, how do we host our portfolios? Do we use wordpress.com or something similar for blogs? Do we find a good wiki host? I am not sure. These are some things I hope to work through in the next few weeks as I set up the basic structure of the portfolios.

Have you used web based portfolios in your classroom? How did you answer the hosting questions? If you have any comments or suggestions, I would love to hear them!

If you are a science teacher and use Twitter at all, you really need to see if you can find time to join a #scichat discussion. #Scichat is similar to #edchat – a discussion about education related topics for one hour every Tuesday evening at 7 pm EDT. However, #scichat focuses on science education. The first episode of #scichat was held on Tuesday, June 8 at 9 pm EDT. We decided to continue to hold #scichat discussions every two weeks.

So, the second edition of #scichat is coming up tomorrow evening. For more information about the founding of #scichat, please visit this page on Edutopia. You can also vote here for the topic of this week’s #scichat. I hope to see you there!

I am a huge NASA fan. I have been for as long as I can remember. Perhaps it’s a byproduct of growing up in Florida, or the fact that my first visit to Kennedy Space Center was when I was 20 months old. Regardless of why, I am a huge NASA fan.

NASA Tweetups

Even before I became a teacher, I knew there were a lot of opportunities for educators with NASA. However, it wasn’t until I started getting active in Twitter that I really saw how involved with the public NASA is. NASA hosted it’s first “tweetup”, a gathering of twitter users, on January 21, 2009 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Since then, NASA has continued to support tweetups including two launch tweetups (STS-129 and STS-132) as well as tweetups at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. for Earth Day, and as part of World Science Fest in New York City.

I had the distinct privilege of being a part of two of these events in person. Both I would call once in a lifetime experiences. I doubt I will ever have the opportunity to do things like this again. But then again, I never thought I would have a chance to do anything like this in the first place – so who knows!

In February of this year, I traveled to Houston, TX for the first NASA tweetup that was held at Johnson Space Center. It was a fabulous day. We began with a welcome session and Q&A with astronaut Bobby Satcher. We even had a recorded message from three of the ISS station crew members! Then, we began our tours visiting the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility, the shuttle Mission Control Center, and the ISS Mission Control Center. This was during the mission of STS-130, and we were able to watch both the shuttle wake up from the shuttle MCC, and President Obama’s conference call to the shuttle and station crews from the ISS MCC! It was incredible!

Here is my photo album on Flickr from this event. (Note I do have more photos – just not uploaded yet!)

Then in May, I was chosen to be a part of the STS-132 launch tweetup at Kennedy Space Center. This was the second launch tweetup and included 150 people. I wrote a lot about it on my class blog. I used my blog and Twitter to stay connected with my classes in GA while I was experiencing the shuttle launch in FL. My students have a great appreciation for NASA and the shuttle program specifically because of it. Here is my Flickr set from that event.

If you are interested in all of the ways NASA is involved in social media, you can visit the NASA Connect page. If you are an educator not on Twitter yet, the NASA opportunities alone are worth the time investment!

Educator Resources

NASA has a plethora of educator resources. It’s easy to miss some of the great opportunities that they have available because there is so much information. The NASA Education page is a great place to start. You can find even more information from the Educator Resource Network Field Centers and State Centers. Take a look, and you’ll probably find there is a center not too far from you.

I also recommend signing up for the email list of NASA Education programs. You’ll receive emails a few times a week about all sorts of programs for k12 students through to post-doc. I find it’s the easiest way to stay on top of all of the exciting NASA opportunities that I can incorporate in my classroom.

NASA Explorer Schools Project

You have probably heard about NASA Explorer Schools before. NASA has revamped this program, and it will be relaunching on September 1st. It’s open to classrooms in grades 4-12. What’s unique about this relaunch is that it has been opened up to a larger audience. If you are interested in more information or registering for the orientation to be a part of this project, please go to the NASA Explorer Schools Project page.

NASA Electronic Professional Development Network

NASA has partnered with Georgia Tech to provide professional development opportunities to teachers. These are online courses in a variety of subject areas. They will soon be adding self-paced programs in other areas. Be sure to check it out periodically, as application windows open and close. (Right now the course Using Robotics to Enhance STEM Learning is open for applications.) Be sure to check out the NASA Electronic Professional Development Network site soon! By the way, did I mention that these courses are free and you should be able to talk to your school or district about receiving professional development credit for them?

I hope this gives you some information to help you get started in finding NASA materials to use in your classroom. NASA caters to all curriculum areas – not just science, math, technology, and engineering. I will also be sure to share new opportunities as I run across them. NASA is an amazing organization, and they can help make your classroom be out of this world!

It’s summer, so of course I am spending my time thinking about how I can do things differently next year. I have lots of huge plans including web based portfolios and totally revamping my grading system. Not to mention lots of new lessons to write with all the fantastic strategies I learned during my gifted endorsement class this year.

One management thing I am considering very seriously are class jobs for my students. I’ve had the opportunity to visit many elementary classrooms, and teachers there are so good at giving students a job to do – and hence a more important sense of belonging in the classroom community. I have given some thought to jobs that students could do that would be worthwhile and not feel to kiddie.

Here’s what I have so far. Feel free to leave comments about other jobs I could use or any success you have had using class jobs with middle schoolers.

• videographer
• photographer
• blog editor
• notebook editor
• supply coordinator
• graded work distributor
• tech support
• bulletin board artist
• absent student liaison
• video editor
• photo scrapbooker

Two days before spring break, and the next lesson style in my solar system unit was a reading for meaning lesson on comets, asteroids, and meteors. If you are not familiar with the the reading for meaning strategy, students are given an organizer with statements on it. Students decide whether they agree or or disagree with the statement. (This part is sort of like an anticipation guide.) Then, students read a passage or two and look for information that supports and/or refutes the statement. Finally, they make a conclusion about the statement.

The first day of this lesson, we worked through determining if we agreed or disagreed with each statement. Students then read two short articles about comets, asteroids, and meteors in order to collect information. We then held a class discussion, and finally made our conclusions about the information.

The second day (the day before spring break – can you imagine how excited the students must have been?), we completed our synthesis activity. The synthesis activity I designed for this lesson was making a video about comets, asteroids, and meteors. I gave the students some basic specifications about what needed to be included in their videos, but I let them choose the format of their videos. I did assign students to groups of three or four students.

This was such a fantastic project for the day before spring break. Every student was engaged. No one had to sit in a seat for 55 minutes and try to sit still, and the videos I have are fantastic. I am hoping to get parental approval to post the videos to the web. Once I do, I’ll share them. They are cute, amusing, and oh so much fun! (Oh – I forgot to mention, the students know all about comets, asteroids, and meteors, too!)

After we finished our jigsaw assessment, the next concept up was to learn about the sun. In my state curriculum (GA) learning about the sun, it’s parts, and how it works is an extension. Personally, I think knowing about the sun is important.

One of the lesson styles I had to use for my gifted endorsement class was new metaphorical. This seemed liked a great fit for learning about the sun. I centered this lesson around the evocative question – How is the sun like a factory? In the first step of the lesson, I asked students to brainstorm ways that the sun is like a factory. We then shared the ideas with the class. I was amazed with some of the ideas that the students had about the sun. They made some fantastic connections that I had not even realized.

I then provided some material for the students to read and extract information from about the sun, the core, the photosphere, the chromosphere, and the corona. For our next step, I asked students to refine the statement, “The sun is like a factory because. . .” Students then wrote their own analogies about the sun, core, photosphoere, chromosphere, and corona. Finally, I asked students to create a personal analogy about the sun. They had to choose which part of the sun is the most like their personality and why.

As a synthesizing activity, students created children’s books with two direct analogies about the sun, the core, the photosphere, the chromosphere, and the corona. They books are incredible!

I spent five days on my jigsaw lesson doing the following activities on each day:

1. Explain concept and work in expert groups
2. Work in expert groups
3. Work in jigsaw groups
4. Work in jigsaw groups and class discussion
5. Assessment (test)

In most of my classes, the expert groups and jigsaw groups worked well together. However, there were a few expert groups where only a one or two members knew the material well enough to teach it to their jigsaw groups. Also, some students did not take the assessment seriously and did not study for it as they should have. Others did very well.

I think next time I will build in some incentives for each expert group to know their material backwards and forward in order to explain it to the jigsaw groups. I also think I will ask them to write assessment questions that go along with their concepts.

I will definitely be using this lesson again, but I will be adding some tweaks to it. Also, I think spending an extra day in the schedule may allow expert groups to really know their material.