Improvement

Things are still going well. Teaching is fun and stressful at the same time. It requires me to be "on" all day long. Once 3:15 hits it feels like I've just gotten off a rollercoaster.

We found another black widow the other day. My 6th period was outside doing the diet coke and mentos experiment. While going back in a few students called me over to the AC unit outside. The whole class was crowded around a sizeable spider web with a pretty large black widow in it along with her egg sack. We stayed at a far distance and watched it for a few minutes and then proceeded back in to the classroom.

After revealing the test scores and having a goal to work toward, last week went pretty well. 3 classes made an 80% or better on the vocabulary retest (2 81%s and one 84%) and one other came close. One class is still a bit behind and the other passed on the firs test. Having a test as a looming deadline did help with classroom management. I could easily ask if the question or what a student was doing (in the case of off topic questions/misbehavior) would help get them closer to passing the test. This week I am doing the same with Friday as test day. The tests are short enough to be finished in half the period and I can now use the other half for super scientist friday. I realized that it's a steep uphill battle to get students to learn new material on a friday right after a test, so SSF is a good thing to have after the test. I need each class to a set a goal for this friday's test, which will happen tomorrow.

I was really happy with some of the test scores I saw from students who are considered "problem students" by many teachers. Many act well in my class and did extremely well on the tests. I was really happy to see them succeed on the test as these are students for whom many teachers have low expectations.

Along with the test scores, the week started off well. We did a fun activity demonstrating phenotype, genotype, and how alleles/genes are passed on based on probability. Students flipped coins (one for each parent) to determine traits for a smiley face/alien (it depended on the artist). The rest of the week will be spent focusing on going from phenotype to genotype and back, punnett squares, and a few more vocabulary terms.