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.

Gladiator's Family Night

On Wednesday night of last week, our team, the Gladiators, had an amazing family fun night! We invited all of our students to come and bring their families. We had hot dogs, chips, drinks, and Little Debbie snack cakes. The best part was, we managed to get it all donated! So, all that our students and their families had to pay was 50 cents a person to cover the cost of their drink. We had to move the event inside due to the threat of inclement weather, but we still had a great time. Also, the weather never really got too bad, so we were still able to go outside and play football and soccer. I had a great time with this. The kids definitely seemed to enjoy the fact that I was playing with them and were all eager to show off. It was a great event.

LABOR DAY!!!!

I have made it through the first two weeks and we have all successfully arrived at Labor Day! To be honest, "made it through" is not at all accurate. I have love every minute of it so far. And to think... it almost never happened! Let me take you back a few weeks, so that you can all know what I have experienced coming into this school year.

I spent the entire summer confident that I would be working at a junior high that I had interviewd with in April. As far as I knew, we were just waiting on the green light from the district offices. I felt assured that I was the man for the job and did not even persue other jobs all summer. Big mistake! Turns out, things were not as certain as I had thought and the night before New Teacher Orientation I had no job. Luckily, a principal at a local middle school was talking to the assistant principal of my wife's elementary school and mentioned that they had just had a job open up for a 7th grade science teacher. I interviewed on the Monday before school started and got my official hire on that Wednesday. So, I got to go to 2 1/2 days of inservice and had that weekend to prepare my room (and myself) for 7th graders!

The first week was a blur. I have 30 students in my "homebase" and 116 (as of now... the number seems to change every day) spread out over my 5 science classes. Our school does something called "Bootcamp" for the first 3 days, where the students learn the different rules for various places in the school (the cafeteria, the gym, the hallways, etc) So, the schedule was all weird for the first few days. However, we got our lockers assigned, got all of the necessary forms handed out, and got to know our homebase kids well. I also met with each science class at least once in those first three days and had an opportunity to go over my expectations and classroom norms. The last two days of the week were on the normal bell schedule. In science, we began talking about (and passing around) the different pieces of science equipment we will use in lab this year, as well as going over lab rules and procedures. I remember being amazed by how well behaved my students were the first week!

The second week was much more structured than the first. We had the regular schedule all week. In science, we had a quiz over the lab rules and equipment. Then, we did an activity about observation. I gave them 7 minutes to look around the room and make any notes or draw any pictures that they wanted to from their observations, then I had them sit with their heads down while I changed 10 things in the room. They then had to find as many changes as they could. This activity went over really well and led perfectly into our discussion of how important observation is in science. From there, we did an activity to introduce them to the text book we will be using this year and ended the week with a brief intro into experimental design. On Friday we did an activity where they designed an experiment to determine which type of paper makes a better paper airplane. It went very well, projectiles flying through the hallway!!

So, I made it to Labor Day! It has truly been great thus far. My biggest issues have been simply with getting comfortable with middle school. I never thought I would teach such a young age. They present different challenges, but are so engaged and so happy to be talked to. I defnitely think I am in the right place.

Oh! Also, I should mention that I am on an amazing "team". In middle school, the teachers and students are placed into teams (1 science teacher, 1 math, 1 social studies, and 1 lang. arts). Mine is amazing. They are all so willing to do whatever it takes to help our kids. I love that. We already organized a family night just for students on our team. More on that later.

Introduction

Allow me to introduce my blog.. After the Bell! This blog will chronicle all of the excitement, fear, confusion, frustration, joy, and general ups and downs of my first year of teaching. I will try to post weekly regarding the activities going on in my classroom as well as to let everyone know how I am holding up. I am super excited going into this year and I think that this blog will be an interesting read. WELCOME!