My Year in 6th Grade

Gonna start off complaining like every good teacher does, because it has been almost a year since I've posted... oops...

If you remember I had a year of changes. I moved from Math to Science (which I'd been trying to do since I started teaching) and then I moved from 8th grade down to 6th grade. Since I got to stay at the same school I already knew most of the Science team, but I did have to meet the other 6th grade teachers. As expected, we got along swimmingly!

Of course anytime you have changes, you also get the challenges. As much as I complained about my 8th graders in the past, I missed them so much this year. As weird as it might sound, they had a level of maturity that my 6th graders have not mastered: my 8th graders just like my sense of humor more... I guess I'm just an 8th grader at heart.

But enough complaining! Just so I remember when August rolls around, here's all the ups and downs I experienced this year, and what I learned from them:

Dancing- I'm sure many teachers had to deal with Fortnite dancing this year. My babies had lots of extra energy to get rid of and Flossing was how they chose to use it. Everyone I asked for advice told me you have to keep them moving. We did lots of Scavenger Hunt activities this year to keep them up and moving. My skill specialist also suggested that we channel that movement into writing. When they're filling out their notebooks put them on a timer and stick to it.

Quiver- cool app that I learned about that uses augmented reality to make 3D images from a 2D sheet of paper. We used it to look at cells and to see the different organelles (even though we only looked at the nucleus).

The Euk has a Nuc, but the Pro says No! 

I got nominated for Teacher of the Year!- no I didn't win, Mr. Tienor, our band director, won. I'm totally fine with him winning, because he does so much for out kids (and he sometimes reads my blog), and it was an honor to lose to him.

Conductivity- this one wasn't actually something that I did, but I think everyone could benefit from hearing it. When you are trying to show your kids that gold or silver jewelry conducts electricity, make sure you take off the jewelry before hooking it up to the 9-volt and Christmas tree lights.

I got to go to CAST (Conference for Advancement of Science Teaching) this year. It was super awesome and I learned a lot, and I should have written a post specifically about it, but I did not... Bad Casey, bad! Still might do a post about it, who knows...

Practice what you preach- if you expect the kids to wear goggles, take notes, keep up with things, then you need to wear goggles, take notes, and keep up with things. And they're only going to get as excited as you do.

Always have a Plan B- if you're doing a lab outside and the weather is not cooperating you have to do something else. YouTube is a great way to show the kids what you were trying to do if things go wrong, or have your own videos pre-made. *Cooking show voice* "If you don't have your own videos, YouTube is fine"

Speaking of voices, one of our teachers was on The Voice this year. Shawn Sounds (Mr. Taylor) gave it his all, but unfortunately he wasn't able to capture a win. 

Remember that children have different life experiences than you did- this story is actually a spin off of Plan B. When we were teaching Conduction, Convection, and Radiation we were going to make solar ovens. The kids were super excited to make s'mores in their ovens, unfortunately the clouds had different plans. I promised the kids s'mores, and they were gonna get s'mores. So we run inside and I grab candles and skewers and we're gonna roast the marshmallows instead. My thought was that everyone had roasted marshmallows before, either outside or on the gas powered stove in the kitchen. I was wrong. Turns out that most of my kids don't have gas stoves at home, or have not been camping. One girl sets her marshmallow on fire and then she starts to panic and I feel like Mr. Wilson from Denis the Menace. Luckily I get her calmed down and no one (me) got burned or lost an eye. I had to change up the safety procedures after that, but I'm glad I got to share that first roasting experience with many of my students. 

As usual I passed around my book so my kids could write down their memories from class and leave me a little note.