Diversity!!

Diversity is something we pride ourselves in at J. O. Kelly Middle School. Here is a typical sampling of my students.

As you can see, we are a diverse group even to the outsider. Our school is approximately 60% minority students (which I guess makes them the majority) We have a very large number of Hispanic students, and we have a sizable number of students from the Marshall Islands. We also have a small number of African American and Asian students. Oh yeah... and we have quite a few Caucasian kids as well. I love the different racial and ethnic backgrounds because of how much experience we have to draw from in each and every class.

However, there is much more diversity in my classes than just skin color or family background. We have several students with IEP's, and we have several students who are in GT. We have several students who love soccer, others who prefer basketball or football or band. We have one child who is in a wheelchair due to a traumatic brain injury. In both of the groups below there is (intentionally) at least one student who seriously struggles in school, one who is a very strong leader, and at least one who is a strong student. Knowing the differences in my students has led to much more effective and productive group activities.

Each kid in my class is a completely unique individual. Trying to list all the ways in which they are diverse is like chasing after the wind. I have, however, found that they are all similar in some major ways. They all want to succeed. They all want you to love them (though not all of them want you to know they want that). They all can surprise you at any given moment with what they might say or do and they all change substantially from day to day!

Mixtures

On Friday, October 3rd, our class did some explorations in the lab regarding mixtures. We had been studying the differences between heterogeneous and homogeneous mixtures and the different techniques used to separate them!

We made some pretty neat mixtures, like salt water, Kool-aid, and oil and water. Then, we learned why you should not just randomly try to mix things together by mixing baking soda, vinegar, and food coloring!

After making some mixtures, we demonstrated some of the different ways in which mixtures can be separated. We used filter paper and evaporation, but the students' favorite was easily separation by magnetism! Everyone wanted to touch the iron that we extracted from some "crime scene dirt".

My classroom!

Here are some pics I finally got around to taking of my classroom. It is not as well equipped as I might have dreamed, but it has certainly come to feel like home over the last 2 months.

And here is my "famous" Words to Know board. My students write vocabulary words on it and we then write an easy-to-understand definition together. Then, they use a graphic organizer called a KIM sheet to assign meaning, a picture, and a sentence to the word.