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NASA announced last week that they will be hosting another launch tweetup, this time for the launch of Discovery (STS-133) on November 1. The tweetup will be a two-day event on October 31 and November 1 culminating with the afternoon launch of Discovery. Here are some reasons why you should sign up:

1. It’s the last launch and mission of Space Shuttle Discovery.
2. It’s your chance to see a launch up close and personal (right next to the iconic countdown clock!)
3. You will have a chance to see parts of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center that are not on the public tour (like the employee cafeteria )
4. It’s a great way to share the excitement of space exploration with your students
5. It’s a fantastic teaching and learning experience for #STEM teachers and students
6. You will meet some of the coolest space enthusiasts
7. You will meet some of the coolest astronauts and NASA engineeers
8. It’s a once in a lifetime experience
9. You never forget your first launch
10. This is one of the two remaining scheduled shuttle launches, soon it will be too late

I went to the last NASA launch tweetup for STS-132. It was amazing! Plus, I shared the experience with my students through our class blog and Twitter. They became so excited about space and exploration. Many even came in early on the last day of school to watch the shuttle landing on NASA tv. They learned a great deal, and this excites me since they are the future of space exploration!

So, what do you do if you want to be a part of this amazing event? Follow @NASA and @NASAtweetup on Twitter. Check out the #nasatweetup hashtag. Find more information on the NASA tweetup web page, and be sure to register for your chance for a spot on August 24-25. I’m sure they are looking for a few good teachers to share this even with students. Give it shot – you might just get chosen to have on of the most amazing experiences of your life!

I am about to wrap up the second week of school with my kids. From the first day, I reinvented my usual first two weeks of school lessons to get rid of the introductory science process skills lessons and replaced them with inquiry based lessons surrounded by the content (geology – classifying rocks by their formation). I did not totally ignore important scientific skills like lab safety, I just incorporated it into the geology content I was teaching.

Well, I am about to wrap up this “lesson”, and I am so excited about the success. Today, my kids were looking at clues, deciding if it was about igneous, sedimentary or metamorphic rocks, and then helping me put our notes together. They then took their clues and notes, looked at rock samples, and determined what type of rock each one is. They totally get this material because they have discovered it. At no point have I stood in front of my class and lectured. All I did was give instructions and occasional guidance. I think my kids have really seen not only how rocks are classified but also how to solve problems and work together. Tomorrow, I hope to wrap this all up with the final identification of our rocks.

It’s been a multi-week process because of integrating the additional science process skills that we needed as well as setting up our web portfolios in the computer lab. The lessons would probably take about 4-5 days without this information added throughout.

I’m attaching the handouts, clues, keys, and the lesson plan in case you’d like to use it. Please feel free to modify in any way you like. I just ask that you do leave attribution to me as the original author. Please let me know if you have any questions about the lesson.

Download The Great Rock Mystery lesson plan zip file

Now, to create another inquiry based lesson about the rock cycle!

One of the things I really want to work on this year is building a community of learners within my classroom. During the first couple of days, we have already started getting to know each other – and how to work together. I have also been sharing with my students information about our class jobs, assessment, and community environment.

I cannot tell you how pleased I am already with the way my students are working together. Not only that – but they help each other out and often without me prompting them. This is even more impressive since I have a couple of large classes – my biggest has 31 students, but they are very good about working together, having fun, and still respecting each other. I have high hopes for this school year. If they are already so cognizant of what is required for working together and helping each other, I know we are going to accomplish incredible things together this year. I was conferring with a colleague, and we agree that this group has the ability to do some amazing things together. I cannot wait to see where the journey takes us this year!

Today was the first day of 2010-2011 school year. It was a fantastic day, and I know this will be a wonderful year. I’m really pleased with the activities I put together for the first day of school. It’s different from what I’ve done before, but I think it worked really well.

Here’s what I did:

1. Draw a scientist – to get an idea of how my kids picture scientists. I haven’t looked at the drawings super closely yet, but I was surprised how many of them drew astronomers!
2. Get to know you activity – I passed out one Jolly Rancher to each student. The information they shared was dependent on the color of Jolly Rancher they took. This worked really well. (I got this idea from another teacher.)
3. The Great Rock Mix Up – all this week we are looking at my rock collection that is all mixed up. Today, I had the students sort them into categories and name the categories. We did this once, shared the categories we used and why, and then sorted a second time. When we were done, we talked a little bit about what we learned and what we still need to know in order to identify the rocks.
4. Week ahead – finally, I gave the students a quick overview of what we are doing the rest of the week.  I also told them that by the end of the week they will have enough information to identify all of the rocks!

A couple of weeks ago, I talked about how I planned to use my two classrooms. So far, this is working out well. We are having class in the science lab, and I really like the feel of it. Here a few a photos of both rooms to give you an idea of our working space:

The area is still pretty much a blank canvas. I’m waiting to fill up the walls with student created work. Also, each class will have their own section of the bulletin boards to fill up as they see fit. I really want my students to feel like this is a spot where they can learn and have ownership in our community.

Here’s to a great year!

Yesterday we had our open house for our new group of sixth grade students. Open house is always such an exciting time. I love meeting my new kids, but even more, I love meeting their families. It’s a great reminder to me that I teach a child who is very precious to a mom and dad, sister and brother. I am being sent to my class each day over 100 of the most important people in the world: children who will one day be leaders.

I was amazed by the turnout I had for open house as well. Every single student in my homeroom attended. This is a first for me, and I think it really says a lot about the community my school is in. I also have siblings of former students, and that is always so much fun as well.

Besides meeting my new students yesterday, I also had the privilege to receive visits from students I have taught over the previous three years: rising freshmen, eighth graders, and seventh graders. I love it when my kids come back to say hello. It really means a lot to me. It’s so much fun to see how much they have grown and changed over the summer and throughout the course of the years. I see so many bright futures!

This is what teaching is all about for me: inspiring our future generation!

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!