Time

Where does the time go? I am 4 days behind in grading and I need to figure out some way to get my Physical Science kids to stop working on worksheets, and turning stuff in to be graded! Geez! I am toast!

The Science Curricilum Specialist for our district is going to be coming to my class tomorrow to help me use the Vernier Probes for the first time. I am really nervous but so far, all week this week my BIO kids have been using the laptops in class and (knock on wood) I have not had one problem yet! They have all been really good about showing me any little ding or scratch on them. This is due to the fact I threatened them with their life if they damaged the laptop in any way. I also created a spreadsheet so all the kids use the same laptop every time. I showed each group how I expected the laptops to be taken out of the cart, and how I wanted them turned back in to the cart. So far, so good. I am really glad the SCI Specialist is coming out tomorrow. Especially since I am not all that comfortable with using the Vernier probes myself. I am really thankful he will be even just an extra set of eyes and hands for me to utilize!

Hopefully, I can keep up this pace with the BIO kids. Their prezi presentations look AWESOME! I just hope they pull off this project as well as I hope they do. Maybe they will listen to each other better than they listen to me!

Wrote an egg lab for the BIO kids to illustrate diffusion and osmosis. The lab I found on the internet I thought was a great lab and I spent about 2 hours modifying it today at school to fit my classroom needs and materials. As I was writing the lab, I thought something sounded "fishy" with the directions off the internet. Then, after I printed the final copy and printed enough hand-outs for all my classes, my science department head called to ask me a question.

She said, "Well, if you don't remove the shell, how are they going to see the diffusion?" I told her, "Yeah, I noticed that too - but I followed the lab from the internet." She laughed and said that I was missing a big step and DUH! I missed a HUGE step! AUGH! Oh well. I will be re-doing that tonight. Glad she told me though! That would have SUCKED if I prepped everything and then we couldn't do anything because I missed the most important step!