Classroom Procedures and Ideas for the Year

Since it is the beginning of a new school year we are all attending trainings and sitting through who did what during the summer while our minds are trying to figure out how we want this year to go. I have decided to bring back a few things I used to do and try a few new things. First I will mention things I do in my class that I will be using this year that have proven successful for me. Note that I do teach in a school with students from all over the world; most families having a higher than usual income.

Tickets: I use raffle style tickets (the ones with the numbers) as a currency to leave the room or buy a pencil.  Lets face it, students like to find excuses to get up and out of the classroom. This procedure holds them more accountable for their behavior and it keeps me from having the "can I go to the bathroom" question all day. Start by giving each student 2 at the beginning of each six weeks. They can earn them for exceptionally good behavior, helping me around the room or being a good friend. Names should be written on these tickets in pen. If a student needs to use the restroom they come to me with their pass (we use their planner for this) and a ticket. They don't have to ask and I don't have to stop teaching to do this. I take the ticket and initial, they go. This also saves me from dealing with the students who NEVER bring a pencil. I will admit the love and logic trick works great for this but it can get old. They bring me a ticket and I give them a pencil. I do not ask for it back; it's theirs. At the end of the six weeks the kids get to exchange their ticket(s) for a piece of candy. You could also add points to the six weeks test if you can't or don't want to give out candy.

Shout-outs: Everyone likes to be praised, especially by our peers.  Shout-outs give students the opportunity to say good things about each other. I ask students to fill out slips that I make, print and leave in a designated area in the room. They write another student's name and write something positive about them or something they did that really helped them out. I ask them to try and give a shout out to a different student each week and I give them examples of things they might write. They put them in a old coffee tin that has a hole in the lid for my review. I check all of them then put them on a bulletin board. I did keep track of who got a shout out and how many incase someone felt left out, but no one really said they felt left out or complained. This went over well.

Dismiss: The bell, it dismisses the students, right? I know that is a big pet peeve of most teachers. This is out students leave science. We clean up and pack up and sit in our chairs quietly. When the bell rings or is about to ring I say "have a good day ladies" and as a unit they reply back "have a good day Mrs. Page" they walk out the door or line up if the bell has not rang. Once the majority of the girls are out of the way is say "have a good day gentlemen" and they say the same thing that the girls did back to me. This instills respect for others. I will occasionally let the guys go first or if we are running behind I simply say students instead of ladies and gentlemen. This also makes dismissal less chaotic.

Gathering supplies: Each table has 4 chairs. each spot at the table is assigned a number or color. For example all the students in the south west corner are 1s and all the students in the northwest corner are 2s. I introduce this at the beginning of the year so when it comes to getting lab supplies I give jobs. Number 1s grab a triple beam balance. number 2s get 5 rocks. simple.

Independence is important for students so at the beginning of the year I show them what I expect and where they can find things they need. They don't have to ask to sharpen a pencil. Students just go to the sharpener and if I am addressing the class they make eye contact with me and wait till I stop talking. They can also get up and get a marker, glue, tape or map pencils if needed and it does not cause a distraction because we went over procedures at the beginning of the year. (if you are unfamiliar with this ready First Days of School by Harry Wong)

Something new:

I teach Gifted students, who happen to be mixed in a class with preap students. It has been a challenge to cover the standards required and dig deeper with my GT learners. This year we will be in constant competition. Each lab table will be a team and I will rate each class on their level of effort that class period. On Friday the table with the highest number will get a prize. This might be a candy bar, homework pass, time to use their technology or points. This way they are not graded on if they have the correct answer or not but how engaged they are in learning and how much work they are putting into their assignments. I plan on keeping a running tally on my board each week. 

Electronic device jail: ugh electronic devices....useful in the classroom but a detriment as well! Electronic Devices are allowed in our school and classroom, the problem is figuring out how to monitor and use them affectively. This year I will have a no warning/ no excuse policy. if they are caught texting or playing on their device it will placed in "jail" and they will have to pick it up at the end of the day.

Cells and Organic

In 7th grade science we have been discussing cells and organic chemistry. Here are a few examples of how we did this in our ISN:

Students complete a cell structure and analogy worksheet after completing notes. we went over this as a class and they glued it on the right side. Then before they took a quiz we did a vin diagram on the left side to compare plants and animals.

For organic chemistry we started by completing a card sort about elements and compounds. I had them write the definition for element and compound on the top left side of their spiral. We discussed the sort together and watched two brainpop videos to remind them about elements and compounds. Next we read an article from discovery education about organic compounds and the students created a concept map using the information in the article. We used selective highlighting as we read.

The next day students put information together using a sort that looks like this. I did not cut it all out, just in half. Our IC made this and it is awesome!

After we did this sort I asked the students to pick 2 organic and 2 inorganic compounds and write the info on the left side of the next page. Then we talked about the information and completed notes

ISN in 2013

The ISN really worked out well for the 2012-2013 school year. Students seemed to retain more information and enjoyed doing it. I did make sure to give students time in class when we needed to glue things in and most of the students (6th graders) were able to keep up. I kept my own so they could come in during advisory and use it to help them with theirs.

This year we decided to only right down what we put on the right side in our table of contents. This seems to be easier for the students. I only have a few confused. We started by writing in our table of contents for the first few weeks and numbered our pages. We only numbered the right side pages so when we do something on the left side I say something like "open your spiral to page 10, complete this vin diagram on the left side of page 10, that's page 10 left side". I teach junior high so I have to repeat myself a lot and still students don't "hear".

The great thing about only writing what we do on the right side in our table of contents is we can have a blank left side and it's no big deal!

We glue everything in. After I hand back quizzes and tests students will glue them in on the right and do corrections on the left. I also will have them put our warm up's or engages on the left, even if we haven't glued anything on the right side yet.

The very first thing we talk about is lab safety. The students create a poster about a safety rule and we do a gallery walk as a class. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted them to do as their "output" for this activity but what I decided on worked really well. We glued our safety rules on page1 right side. They did their brainstorming for their poster on the left side 1. When we did the gallery walk, I had them draw a large 2 column, 5 row grid on the left side of page two (entire page). As they traveled around the room and looked at the posters, they either drew a picture or paraphrased the rule depicted on the poster. It worked really well. On the left side we glued a safety cartoon with questions we did in class.

In 7th grade we are learning about cells. The first thing we did was an engage to activate background knowledge. We call it donut notes. This was on the left side of their page. they write the word cells in the center of their page, then draw a circle around it big enough to right in and around. On the inside they wrote what they knew about cells and around the outside of the circle they wrote what their peers said in class discussion. We then did an interactive SMART about cell theory and cells (see below) and they glued their notes in on the left. The next thing they did was a cell analogy worksheet for homework. this was glued on the right side and to the left we did a vin diagram comparing plant and animal cells.

the ISN is a really great tool in the science classroom! especially if your textbooks are old and outdated.

Cell theory from TED ED

first lab

I had surgery on my hand a week ago so its been a while since my last post. until the end of november my posts will be pictures of our spiral with short descriptions.

the following pictures show how we did a lab using the isn. The right side has the question, hypothesis, proceedure & variables. the left has the data, graph & conclusion

Lab Safety and Equipment in the ISN

This is the way we organized our curriculum information for lab safety and equipment in our ISNs. Our table of contents was on page 6 and 7 to begin our first six weeks. Upon reflection we will not need two pages for the table of contents so page 7 will be a quick “review as we go” page where students will write important big ideas for their six weeks test.

The next two pages are the beginning of our safety lessons. We handed out a condensed version of our safety rules and had them glue them on page 9. Then I assigned them two rules to depict on a poster. They were not allowed to write the safety rules on their poster. They used page 8 for brainstorming with their group to help them organize their thoughts for their poster. Two days later, when they had completed their posters, we did a silent gallery walk. I gave each student 9 sticky notes. (I have nine lab tables in my room) They numbered the corner of the sticky to correlate to the tables. My tables are numbered 1-9. They then walked around and wrote down the rule they thought was depicted on each poster on the sticky for that table. Then we talked about it. It was a great activity. I am really trying to make my classroom more learner centered rather than teacher centered and I am really surprised at how well it is going.

On the next two pages we glued an activity called Where’s Safe-T. It is a cartoon of a science lab with a grid on top. There are questions that go along with it. Such as, where is a person wafting or who is making an unsafe observation. The students have to find the coordinates for this. You can use this to incorporate graphs. On Page 11 we glued the grid and on page 10 the questions that went with it. I also showed a video from youtube, “Lab gone wrong”. They wrote their reflections about what they saw on page 10 as well. Eventually we took our safety quiz and the students folded in hamburger style so that they could see the title and taped it over their reflections and answers so they could lift the quiz and see the other. The lab gone wrong video is below

we also watched this lab safty video.....it's awesome

Next we started equipment. We decided to introduce this to our students with an explore lab. Since this is information we are not “giving” them we put it on the left side on page 12. We set lab equipment around the room. Students had to rotate around and write down what they thought the name of the piece of equipment could be, what they thought we use it for and draw a picture. The next day we went over their answers and gave them a handout with pictures. See the picture that follows for our set up. This lab was much better than just taking notes on equipment

I will add a picture with the "tools of a scientist" on page 13. Some students needed more than just one page. In this case I told them to continue to page 13 and when we glued their hand out they had to be able to lift up part of it to see their lab below.

We are now ready for our safety and equipment test. The next two pages will contain thier review. I was going to put their review on page 15 and have them make a foldable about the review but we did not get to it.

ISN day 1

Today was the 2^nd day of school. We took the entire period to set up our spiral and we did not finish. Our class periods are 45 minutes long and I foresee it taking another 15 minutes or so tomorrow to get the table of contents in. When the students came in today they picked up a copy of the directions for the left and right sides, STAAR formula chart and a packet with explanations on how to do some of the output strategies.

Before I get in to explaining how we put everything together today in class, I want to share pictures of how I planned it out, then at the end of this post you will see the pages completed.

 Notice that the pages are numbered. Odd numbers are on the right and Even are on the Left. I have a title sticky note and another sticky to explain what will be on that page. For the picture below, I know there will be two things on that page and I let myself know how to put it in.  

 Explaining it to the students:

I told them that this was THEIR spiral and will have their work in it and I want them to own it and enjoy using it. I also told them that if they want to decorate the front cover with pictures and cover it with packing tape or contact paper they could. I showed them my cover from last year’s spiral.

We printed the papers they got today on colored paper so it would be easier for them to find and it would help us explain. The first thing we did was tape the formula sheet inside the cover of the spiral. The very first page of the ISN is their Title page. We are having them draw an ologist. They pick what type of scientists they would like to be and draw the scientist as that science. For example, a student who wants to study meteorology could draw a tornado as the scientist or a cloud. They will be working on their ologist tomorrow in class so I had them number the top right corner of the page (1) and write their first and last name, science and my name (Mrs. Page) on the top right corner. See my example below:

  

 Pages 2 and 3 contain the information to help the students understand what goes where in their spiral

On page 5 we glued in a flip chart about the different type of strategies they will be using on the left side of their spiral. By this time we had to clean up. Tomorrow for a warm up they will be doing a vinn diagram about what goes on the right page vs the left page in their ISN page 4 (across from flip chart). It is set up so that the input (flip chart) is across from the output (vinn diagram)

After the warm up tomorrow we will set up our table of contents for the first six weeks on pages 6 and 7

Getting Ready

First I would like to explain my reasoning for starting a blog:
1. The students are blogging and the district I teach in is asking the teachers to use more technology in the classroom and to incorporate the students devices into lessons. I figure I need to understand the technology before the kids use it in science.
2. This is my first year to have an actual Interactive Student Notebook. Sure we had a spiral we glued stuff into, but it wasn't really interactive. I researched information specific to using ISNs in science and the material out there is lacking. My plan is to give other teachers an idea of how we plan as a team and set up the ISN with the students.

Background about me:
I am going into my 5th year of teaching middle school science. I have a split; 6th and 7th grade. My husband also teaches 7th and 8th grade science. I will be the primary blogger here, but occasionally he might jump in. We teach in Texas. My degree is NOT in teaching. I wanted to be a wildlife biologist but the good Lord had other plans for me. We both love the outdoors and outdoor education. We volunteer for Texas Brigades and try to get our students outside as much as possible

Planning for class:
The students will be in my classroom Monday and everything is organized and in its place. Hopefully it stays that way throughout the year. I will post pictures and info about my classroom organization and procedures later.
I am lucky that I have two awesome teams to work with, an awesome department and an awesome instructional coach. Our assistant principle (AP) wanted us to work on making our science spirals more interactive so he enlisted the help of our IC and here we are. Our plan is to incorporate the new interactive lessons with 6th grade only this year. Next year when 7th grade starts the kids will be used to it and the transition will be easier. I planned with my 6th grade team on Thursday morning. We knocked out the entire first six weeks with curriculum. We did this without thinking about how the ISN would work. We are basically doing the same things we did last year. Then Thursday afternoon we started figuring out how to put the curriculum into the spiral and make it easy, understandable and engaging for the kids. We each got out own spiral, some sticky notes and our lesson plans. It really was easy at this point. We had a general idea of how to set up the spiral and it worked

ISN set up
If you open up the spiral and look at the pages, the right page is the input side and the left side is the output side. Basically what we do in class goes on the right. Homework, reflections, data from labs and other products go on the left. (I will post pictures of this later)

We numbered the pages and used sticky notes to indicate what would go on each page while we were planning. We discussed each lesson and what we thought needed to go on the input and output sides on the spiral. I have been told that you do not always have to have an output for a lesson, but we plan too. The planning process was easy.  

Inside the cover of the spiral the students will glue the chart they will use on the STAAR in 8th grade so they get used to seeing it and using it. The front of the first page is incorporated into our first lesson about science. The students will create a picture representing what type of scientist they will be. It’s just a cover page. This page is numbered 1 and should be on the top right corner of the page. The back of the title page is page 2 and is the first table of contents page. The next page (right side) is also a table of contents page numbered 3. For their table of contents they create a T-chart with left side numbers and titles on the left and the right side titles and numbers on the right (duh!). The next two pages are instruction sheets that give them examples of what goes on each side of their spiral. The first real input is a foldable we give them listing examples of reflective activities such as writing a poem, mind map, vinn diagram and so on. They will then have to take the foldable and compare right side vs left side using a vinn diagram. We will give them the output activity so we can help them this time.

I will post pictures of my spiral as the process continues