Spring Break

Spring Break has come and gone and I am so broken-hearted! I had the best break and did not want to go back to school. I felt like a teenager again dreading the whole "back to school" routine!

I am officially ready for the end of the school year. I left school before spring break planning only what I was going to do the day we came back from spring break. I had nothing planned after that. I am so disheartened about lesson planning. No matter how carefully I write my lessons, it doesn't appear to be making a difference in my class averages.

Now, after mulling over the issue over and over again, I am becoming that teacher I swore I would never become. I am teaching to the test. I am teaching to the district CRT final I have to give in May. Nothing else. This is depressing because the test only covers about 3 weeks worth of material, but I am going to take 9 weeks to teach it and see what happens.

I busted out the Vernier probes with my Physical Science kids. This is very expensive equipment. The probes have to be hooked up to laptops to read the data. I had the kids complete a lab on endothermic and exothermic reactions using the vernier temperature probes. The lab worked great. All the kids got the data I was hoping for.........they just could not interpret it to save their lives. SO FRUSTRATING! I spent 1 day explaining the difference between the two types of reactions, wrote all the information and background information in the lab, and they did the lab, and they have no idea what any of the data means. Eh - at least I had a great time and it took 3 days to complete the lab and that was 3 days they didn't have to listen to me talk.

I think I figured out a great way to have them pay attention and collect the data accurately. I gave them 1/2 a class period to just "play" with the equipment. They used the temp probes and took their own temperature, took the temperature of hot water and cold water so they could see how the data looks when it is being ran....... This way they got all their crazy antics out of the way before I needed them to be serious and not waste material I paid for with my own money.