Did my spaghetti bridge lab today and I felt it went really well. Will be teaching the excel graphing methods tomorrow so we stopped with some time left. We white boarded about the reading assignment. Unfortunately I needed block scheduling today. They boarded but no time to share. That will have to happen tomorrow. Sigh. I need more time!
I've been feeling the time crunch as well. Last Thursday we did 6 mini-labs to collect data. Actually, I set up 6 mini labs and most of the groups got three to four of them done. We've been learning graphing calculators and white-boarding this week. But that bell comes way too soon every day. I really need to be able to get through two lab discussions in a day and I just can't manage it!
ReplyDeleteI'm having a similar issue with time. The fact that my 2nd hour has 30 kids and my 7th hour has 15 is also posing quite a challenge. Will I be able to keep them both going at the same pace? Should I bother trying?
ReplyDeleteBryan,
I just got around to reading your blog tonight. It's very entertaining. Keep up the good work.
That's a good question Adam. It is always frustrating to me when you get that one class that gets a head of everyone else for whatever reason. The professional educator in me just won't let me 'take a day off' in that hour to let everyone catch up, and yet I don't want to give myself essentially a new prep by letting them race ahead. Also, I don't want to penalize them by having them do extra work to slow them down. So how to stall a class and yet make it an educationally rich experience is a tough one.
ReplyDeleteI think that modeling will help this though. If a class gets too far ahead there is nothing keeping you from perhaps having a deeper discussion during the white board times. Maybe you spend a little more time on some of the more tricky parts. Conversely, if the class is behind you can skim through some of the easy parts and be a bit more choosy on what items you discuss openly.
Thanks for the post and compliment Adam!