This week students took two required pretests and shared about a minute about themselves with their classmates (the "Bio" assignment) on Monday and Tuesday. The next two days were spent introducing and learning about pseudoscience. I started class telling students about all the benefits of crystals and told them I had crystals for sale. I went through a balance test routine with two volunteers and made students believe that holding the crystal was all the difference in their balance, when it was really me manipulating the tests. I then broke the bad news that I had temporarily deceived them and it turned into a lesson on pseudoscience. We also read an article on flat earthers and discussed and shared the worst examples of flat earth "evidences" in groups. On Friday we started class with an article on toning shoes, followed by a news story clip about them, and then answered five text-dependent questions (TDQs) about the article. After that, the nine table groups were each given a different pseudoscience article and had to work together to answer questions about their article. We then shared these answers with the class.
After one week of school, I'm excited to see where this new group of great students goes this year! I'm excited to have students in all 4 grades, including one tremendous class of Honors Earth Science students. It should be a great year. This week, we went through basic beginning of the year things like class policies and procedures, going through my class disclosure and this website, as well as asking students to share about a minute about themselves with their classmates. My classes were at 3 different places all week because of activities freshmen had on Monday, but I got them back on the same page by the end of the week. Next week, we will finish Bio sharing in class by those that haven't gone yet, take 2 necessary pretests on the Chromebooks, and start our review of basic science cornerstones including a quick review on the difference between observation and inference, and scientific measurement. We will spend a little more time on the topics of pseudoscience and the scientific method before moving on to our first Earth Science specific standard, Astronomy, in the coming weeks.
This is Mr. Saurer and I'm excited to have a fresh batch of students in my Earth Science classes at Granger this year. This year I'll be teaching 7 Earth Science classes including one Honors Earth Science class and one Earth Science class specifically for upperclassmen. It's going to be an exciting year for me professionally. For the first time since the Earth Science core curriculum changed in 2012, I'll be teaching this class completely differently. There are 65 objectives in Earth Science, but we as Granger Earth Science teachers have collectively decided on our 20 "power standards", the 20 objectives that we feel are most important that we are going to make sure we nail down before trying to move on to the other 45. All Earth Science students at Granger should be experts in this third of the curriculum by the end of the year (at a minimum) and we hope this extra attention on the "most important" third of the curriculum pays dividends with regards to their growth in science understanding. My goal is to update this blog weekly with what we have been doing in class and where we will going in class in the future. Here's to a great school year!
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AuthorMr. Saurer is a science teacher and basketball coach currently teaching at Granger High School. Archives
February 2019
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