It's late, so I'll keep this short. To sum things up, I'm prepping the unit on Particle Theory to teach to two classes of grade 7's. Planning a unit is tough, and I'm constantly revamping lessons in an attempt to include meaningful and continual assessment while making things interesting for the students. I think I begin actually teaching the unit near the end of this week.
So far I've managed to teach 2 math classes, 3 half periods of science, and one full science class. I incorporated an Xtranormal skit I created as well as the Can Crushing demonstration. Once class actually clapped and about half of them personally thanked me for going through the trouble of making the class so fun! I was blown away. One thing I hadn't really considered for this grade level is that fact that they have VERY limited knowledge about scientific investigations or experimentation. Looks like I'll be teaching them a lot of these Essential Learning Outcomes in this unit, along with the SLO's. Very cool, but also a major challenge. If I do it well, they might actually enjoy science.
I've also agreed to coach the Grade 8 boys basketball team. I'm cautiously excited about this. Of course basketball is a passion of mine, so that part is clean cut. Unfortunately, several of the grade 8's at the school have pretty big attitudes. How do you make a boy into a man Mitch? Oh yeah! I guess we'll be doing a load of man-makers! I'm sure there won't be too many issues, and the ones that do arise will be good for my learning curve.
Later guys
Hey David, great to hear from you. I had some kids come up to me after the dance lesson and tell me how much fun it was. That was truely a great feeling hearing that. As to your question about making a boy into a man? Just make sure that you make the team bigger than the boy instead of the boy being bigger than the team. It's only grade 8 basketball and not the NBA. You're the coach and he's the player no matter what they think. Show him that you will respect him if he respects the team. Go from there. I know that you'll do great. By the way, my practices this week are wednesday from 515-715 and thursday from 6-8. Let me know if you need directions
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