Term 3 madness

So, term 3 is here already. I am trying to hit the ground running…

Today I had my first go explicitly using Solo taxonomy. I used the hexagons (generated by the free ap here) as a starter for my yr 11 Genetics topic. It worked really well, and I found my students where already familiar with a lot of the vocab, and the discussion around which groupings to make meant they helped each other remember. So it was a great success, and I will bring them out in two weeks and use them to help the students see how much progress they are making.

 

I am also going to blog this topic, so will have 2 blogs up and running this term, Yr 12 Chem, which is a work in progress,  and Yr 11 Sci which is still under construction.

I have been inspired to blog these classes by Matt Nicols work blogging for his classes. It means I have a resource for students who are away, or that the students can access for revision, or for when I am away. It is providing me with a good outlet, we are not a BYOD school but it is an easy way for the students to access their learning at any time. I have found student reluctant to access material I put on the ultranet as they are simply not used to accessing information in that way, and I am hoping this works as a lead in for them.

If nothing else, it will help me stay on top of my planning and my lessons.

I am also really looking forward to implementing some of the literacy strategies I picked up at SciCon. I had been thinking about ways to get (my boys in particular) more structured paragraphs, and this timely reminder of the basics was fantastic.

And I can’t wait for the first #scichatNZ chat to go live in just under 2 weeks. I can’t believe the support it already has, and am incredibly thankful for the other amazing people who have picked it up and are running with it. And I have already learned heaps – about setting up facebooks pages and using Google hangouts in particular.

And somewhere I need to fit in open days, tournament week and interchange, Science Fair, reports and Gate evenings, as well as shifting labs around as 2 labs are being demolished next holidays, so the term promises to be very busy.