Friday, December 01, 2006
North Bay
I just went to visit North Bay Environmental camp in North East, Maryland. It is 350 acres situated on the Chesapeake. The mission of the camp is to educate sixth graders in environmentalism as well as character education. It was a very exciting thing to see. The students stay for a week - for many it will be a first week away from home! The whole atmosphere is about fun, learning, and empowerment. I am very excited about the possibilties. We are planning on taking our students in early January - hopefully it will not be too cold!
Monday, November 06, 2006
NSTA Convention
I just got back from the NSTA convention in Baltimore. Baltimore is a great city (what I know of it) and is a great place for a convention.
I only got to go to the Friday seminars but those that I did go to were great. The first one was on magnetism. The speaker had a lot of great ideas for hands-on that I would like to try. What I liked about it was that they had a guy going around showing how to do the different activities. They really worked well together. I learned a lot.
Another, very similar seminar, was on involving parents in science learning. The speaker had great ideas on getting students to go home and teach their parents about what they learned in class.
The last session I went to involved reading in the content area. The focus was comprehension. Many students can read and sound fluent, however, when it comes time to explain what they just read, many cannot. Some of the strategies suggested were to work on paraphrasing and retelling - if a student can put something in their own words then they can show comprehension.
The problem with going to a convention like this is that you come back with so many ideas that it is difficult to know where to start!
I only got to go to the Friday seminars but those that I did go to were great. The first one was on magnetism. The speaker had a lot of great ideas for hands-on that I would like to try. What I liked about it was that they had a guy going around showing how to do the different activities. They really worked well together. I learned a lot.
Another, very similar seminar, was on involving parents in science learning. The speaker had great ideas on getting students to go home and teach their parents about what they learned in class.
The last session I went to involved reading in the content area. The focus was comprehension. Many students can read and sound fluent, however, when it comes time to explain what they just read, many cannot. Some of the strategies suggested were to work on paraphrasing and retelling - if a student can put something in their own words then they can show comprehension.
The problem with going to a convention like this is that you come back with so many ideas that it is difficult to know where to start!
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
great site to learn about the rock cycle
I am using a great website with my students today. We are learning about the rock cycle and I have them using the laptop computers here at school to visit this site:
http://www.classzone.com/books/earth_science/terc/content/investigations/es0602/es0602page02.cfm
The site is an animated and interactive depiction of the rock cycle that includes drawings and photographs of the different concepts including erosion and deposition and compaction and cementation.
The students are working in pairs to navigate the site and writing descriptions of the various animations.
One student told me she thought it was really cool. I think that is the general feeling.
Till next time,
Mr. Honer
http://www.classzone.com/books/earth_science/terc/content/investigations/es0602/es0602page02.cfm
The site is an animated and interactive depiction of the rock cycle that includes drawings and photographs of the different concepts including erosion and deposition and compaction and cementation.
The students are working in pairs to navigate the site and writing descriptions of the various animations.
One student told me she thought it was really cool. I think that is the general feeling.
Till next time,
Mr. Honer
Monday, October 16, 2006
New Blog
Hello,
This is my first post to the Mr. Honer's Science Blog.
I'm still trying to decide how I will use it with my sixth grade classroom. I figured that it would evolve much as my teaching has evolved over the years.
I was just reading about the earthquakes in Hawaii and was struck by the fact that whenever I am teaching about a natural disaster (in this case, we have been discussing earthquakes for the last few weeks) something pops up in the news. Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans just as I was working on the same topic with my students. At least we could use the tragedy as a chance to learn and find out what we could do to serve others! That class raised over $2,000.00 for Katrina relief!
Let me know what you think.
Mr. Honer
This is my first post to the Mr. Honer's Science Blog.
I'm still trying to decide how I will use it with my sixth grade classroom. I figured that it would evolve much as my teaching has evolved over the years.
I was just reading about the earthquakes in Hawaii and was struck by the fact that whenever I am teaching about a natural disaster (in this case, we have been discussing earthquakes for the last few weeks) something pops up in the news. Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans just as I was working on the same topic with my students. At least we could use the tragedy as a chance to learn and find out what we could do to serve others! That class raised over $2,000.00 for Katrina relief!
Let me know what you think.
Mr. Honer
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