Teaching the sun/Earth/moon relationships with a jigsaw lesson

Today is our third day working on the major concepts of the sun/Earth/moon relationships using a jigsaw lesson strategy. We are focusing on five main topics: The causes of day/night and years Seasons Moon phases Solar eclipses Lunar eclipses On the first two days of our lesson, we broke into our expert groups and learned… Continue reading Teaching the sun/Earth/moon relationships with a jigsaw lesson

Reflections on my first New American Lecture lesson

As I think I’ve mentioned before, I am currently working on my gifted endorsement. I am also teaching three sixth grade gifted science classes this year. It is my first time teaching gifted science. As part of my endorsement class, we are writing a unit using several different lesson styles. The lessons are based around… Continue reading Reflections on my first New American Lecture lesson

Now for something completely different

Yesterday, I explained how I taught the water cycle to my traditional science class. Today, the water cycle was on the agenda from my gifted science class. From discussions last week with my gifted classes, I knew that these students have pretty extensive background knowledge of the water cycle. All I needed to do was… Continue reading Now for something completely different

What does this have to do with. . .

Every lesson that I teach revolves around an essential question. All teachers at my school do this, and students have become accustomed to having an essential question totalling relating to the day’s lesson. Today, my EQ was, “How does water move through the hydrologic cycle?” Last week, we discussed the global distribution of water. Today’s… Continue reading What does this have to do with. . .

What I learned at lunch

It’s been a crazy time at my house lately. When school started up in August, we lost three days to furloughs. That set me back a bit – I need those days in the classroom! I also found out that instead of teaching one gifted class and three traditional classes as I initially expected, I… Continue reading What I learned at lunch