Weird Animal Wednesday

And Then It Hit Me

I am excited to share an idea I came up with this summer while walking through a cornfield during
detasseling. There is something about the monotony of staring at corn that lets your mind wander. I do most of my school year planning in the cornfield and come up with my best ideas there as well. I was already sleep deprived from Briggs interrupting my daily naptime with his cuteness, which usually gives me reckless confidence that all my ideas are great. So my idea still has to pass the ultimate test, which is student interest, but nonetheless I'm pretty jacked about it.

Teacher Goals

In my first 3 years of teaching I have noticed several areas that I want to improve on for this year. Some of these I have noticed while others have been pointed out by administration or my peers.

Goal #1.
One issue that our entire district is striving to improve is writing skills. In my opinion, writing a blog is a great way to achieve that goal. First, it gets students writing in sentence and paragraph form in
science. It also gives students an audience where they can get feed back from people other than their teacher. I have tried this in previous years and was met with limited success. (Here is a poster I made about the writing process)

Goal #2.
Something that I think is very important is for my students to get connected with scientific experts. For example, I know a little about nudibranchs but not as much as someone who has dedicated years of his or her life to the topic. These experts have the unique ability to get sophomores excited about learning science. It's really easy for us to connect on Skype and talk for 10-15 min. Another benefit is that for most students, their only exposure to scientists is their teachers. I don't want any students to be turned off to science because they don't like me. These experts just give students another opportunity to see that science is AWESOME!!

Goal #3
In my opinion, the coolest thing about biology is the animals. Our NeSA standards emphasize cellular processes, which is pretty awesome, but it is at the expense of learning about animals. I have always wanted to teach more than just my 2 week Ecology unit.

Weird Animal Wednesday

I have come up with a plan that will accomplish all these goals. This year, every Wednesday, my students will be posting blogs about various animals on Kidblog. Let me show you an example(click here to be able to access the links on the document:

I am still looking for an octopus expert, so if you know any octopus researchers who want to share their expertise they can contact me in the comments or on twitter. (@brandon_timm) Here is a visual I made to share on twitter.

I would love to see how other teachers connect with scientists in their classrooms! Feel free to share your strategies or opinions in the comments!

#coolhuskies

#coolhuskies

On August 22 of this year something strange happened. I experienced a moment where lots of thing that had been vaguely floating around my mind finally clicked into a clear focused idea. 8-22-14 was the day that Mike Smith came to speak at our school. Mike is from a small town in Nebraska who has made it his life's mission to make the world a better place by being nice to the people around him. This message is very much needed among middle school and high school students. I love teaching sophomores because they are awesome, fun, and creative (for example), but they can also be shockingly mean to each other. His message slapped me right in the face because it sounded eerily similar to my own story. Here is a sample of Mike Smith's message.

My Story

My story of life in high school was remarkably similar the the story that Mike shared with our students at Aurora. I went to a small country school from 2nd to 6th grade. When I entered the town school in junior high it didn't take long for me to realize I didn't really fit in with my classmates. All of my clothes were garage sale clothes and I never seemed to have jeans that actually fit. I did too well in school to be very popular and I our family didn't even have a tv at home so I read...a lot. Needless to say, I got made fun of quite a bit and didn't really have many friends. Then, as a freshman I made the varsity wrestling team and ended up qualifying for state. Now, because I was good at sports, things got much easier for me. You would think that after my experience in junior high, I would be understanding and friendly to the kids were in a similar situation, but I wasn't. I think I was scared that if I associated with those kids I would fall out of the cool kids group. I wasn't particularly mean to those kids but I would ignore them completely and never keep my cool friends from tormenting them. I felt like I had matured a lot in college and that I realized all the stupid stuff that everyone thought mattered in high school really didn't.
However, Mike Smith's presentation left me feeling like, as a teacher, I was still doing all those immature things. I was still treating students differently based on how popular they were, still focusing on the students that have everything together instead of the ones that need my attention, still pretending I didn't hear the insults and bullying because its easier to just ignore, and still not standing up for the students who needed me to have their backs the most. Although I pretended I had matured from my high school days, I really hadn't.




My New Mission

Before this revelation, I thought my main focus as a teacher needed to be to teach science to my students. I always get frustrated by cliches but :

I was losing my some of my students because, instead of having their back, I was saying "I don't care about you" with my actions and lack of action. I realized very quickly that I had to step up my game and it needed to be in such a way that my students would recognize that something was different. I decided on a 3 pronged approach:

1) Go to extra-curricular activities and encourage my students to attend as well. I feel that in my school there is a large gap between the students that do every possible activity and the students that don't do any activities. I am hoping students at each others events will narrow that gap and give students something in common to discuss. The only problem with this strategy is that I might be just helping the "rich get richer."

2) Make sure I am more visible to all students and friendly to all students. Too often I was in my own world at school, thinking about what I had to accomplish or what I wanted to teach that I would miss opportunities to show students I cared. I quick conversation in the hallway can go a long way, especially when I notice a student might not be having the best day. It is really amazing how much easier teaching is when your students know you have their backs versus cramming biology information down their throats.

3) Make a super sick hashtag showing the world how super awesome Aurora Husky students are! I decided to take a selfie with at least one former student everyday with a positive message. It has been so much fun asking students to take a selfie and I have been pleasantly surprised at how well it has been received. I have only missed 2 days and hopefully I won't miss any more. I have put a slideshow of these rockstars on my blog site. Here are a few of my favorites to whet your appetite. You can check out the whole slideshow here (#coolhuskies)

What do you do to show your students that they matter? How do you encourage students to be nice to each other? I would love to hear your ideas in the comments section!

Week 1 in the Books...Not Really!

When I saw the topic for this month's #blogamonth, I was very excited to share what I do, but also to see what other teachers do to get the school year started. My first 5 days are probably a little different than some teachers' because I teach at Aurora High School where we have 85 minutes blocks. We meet with the same students everyday, but I only get my students for a semester. With that being said, my class moves twice as fast as a typical class so I can get everything done by Christmas. I am going to combine the two #blogamonth questions:
Teachers, How will you make the first week of school meaningful to your students? 
What have you done / what will you do with the #1st5days?
My plan is to explain what I did during my first week of school PLUS why I did it/why it is meaningful to my students.

My First Week of School
Monday
My goal for the first day of class is to let my students know what I expect out of them. I don't spend a lot of time with introductions because, like any school, I have students switching classes and sections like crazy on the first day. I strive to answer the question that many of my students wrestle with:
"I don't like science. I don't care about science. Why am I stuck in Biology class."
I think Aurora's Mission Statement answers this very well. Here is our new and (maybe) improved mission statement:
Aurora Public Schools provide learning opportunities for all learners in academics, social interactions, and extra-curricular activities.
I have used this to show students that school is more than just academics. Likewise, Biology is about much more that just science. In my high school class (working with sophomores) I want to develop skills they will use later in life regardless of their interests.My Biology mission statement is all about developing useful skills like communication, teamwork, focus, and networking. Thing that will help my students even if they don't use biology again (which is my nightmare...)
I also had the opportunity to attend ALP last year which emphasizes engagement and getting every student doing everything everyday. I made a poster that I am inexplicably proud of. It is a quick and easy way for me to remind everyone that paying attention is something visible that I should be able to see everyday.

Biology Welcome PowerPoint

Tuesday
On Tuesday we started getting into science curriculum. I try to get my students to understand that science is something you DO, not something you memorize! The exciting thing we did this year is we started BLOGGING!! Let me do some explaining...
I have never given my students textbooks because I think textbooks are boring. (That is where the "not really" part of the titel come in.)Now, if I,someone who loves science, think textbooks are boring, I know my students will be bored out of their minds reading chapter sections and answering questions about it. Also, I don't think it is a very good way to get students to care or remember what they learn. I know I have never used a textbook to answer a question since I left college. Instead, I use the internet machine and I think most of my students do too. I know its important for my students to read in my class, so I find articles online about topics we discuss in class. These articles are always more exciting than any textbook, plus they are thinking about science in a way that will be useful after high school.
I do a strategy that is a modified version of close reading where I read the article out loud and they read the next word whenever I stop. After we are done, as a class we define any confusing terms and answer some opinionated questions. I try to find articles that would allow my students to take one side or the other. Here is our article about science and society.
Ebola Article
I asked my students to explain either why the sick doctors should have been left in Africa, or why they should have been brought back to the US. Here are their opinions:
Block 1
Block 2
Block 3
I'm excited to see if my students stay excited about blogging or if they tire of it as the year goes on.
Characteristics of Science PowerPoint
Wednesday
We finished our blogs and posted them on Wednesday. I also had my students do a presentation on a famous scientist to show how society and science are related. I wrote a blogpost about this last year so you can read all about it if you are interested. Scientist Presentations

Last year I also discovered the power of bellringers, so I used to start every class period with a multiple choice questions (similar to a standardized test questions) and had them hold up a 1 for A, a 2 for B, a 3 for C and a 4 for D. I found that I had 4 students answer the question and 18 students copy the answer without thinking. This year I decided to replace it with Kahoot! and it has worked out great so far. I keep a running total of their scores throughout the week and at the end of the week the                                                                                       students with the most points gets a prize!

Thursday
On Thursday, I devoted the entire class period to listening to student presentations. I wanted my students to pay attention to what their classmates were saying so I decided to let them tweet during the presentation. I was nervous that the students would being checking their twitter accounts instead of tweeting, but I thought they did a great job! I should have expected it, but my students seemed more focused on making their classmates laugh than they were about tweeting accurate information... All in all, I was very impressed and thought they did a great job. Here is a record of all the tweets dropped on Thursday.Storify of Student Tweets  I'm excited to try it again with other presentations!

This is one of my favorite tweets:"What people said to Rosalind when she was a girl scientist. #ahsbio"

Friday
Friday was a little less exciting in that we covered information about the Scientific Method. It was a little bit more like your typical science class, where I just shared information that I thought was important for students to know. I did try to spice things up a bit by getting students up and moving with some engagement strategies.
Scientific Method PowerPoint

I would love to see what other high school teacher do during their first week. I'm sure it seems like I crammed a lot into the first week, but remember I probably have twice as much time as most teachers. If you want, I would be thrilled to read in comments you might have!

Par for the Course

This summer I made the mistake of picking up golf as a hobby. I went in deep, my wife bought me new clubs, I got a range pass, I went golfing as much as possible, and I recorded 24 hours of PGA coverage. (Go Rickie!)

 When I first started golfing my goal was to keep each hole in the single digits. Then as I practiced more my goal was for bogeys. Then I occasionally got pars. For most of the summer I thought that birdies were not actually possible, and anyone claiming to have gotten one must be a liar (I like squares better than circles anyway.) My greatest athletic achievement to date is shooting in the double digits for 18 holes (96 baby!) This golfing experience made me think of 2 blog posts I read this summer.

Blog post #1
This blog is written by our technology coach Mr. Badura on his blog entitled Comfortably 2.0. In early July he got his PLN buzzing with the catchy blogpost "Is the "F" Word Holding You Back in Your Classroom.

Of course you should read his entire post but if you are too lazy (or you have concerns about reading a blog with that title) here is a quick summary:
Mr. Badura talks about his experience when the district he taught at went 1:1 Macbook Pro. Here is a really quick excerpt:

Fear immediately set in...

I was afraid that the device was going to be more interesting than me...
I was afraid that I wasn't going to be able to engage my students...
I was afraid that I was going to have to change a lot of the things I was doing in my classroom...
I feared that the technology rich lesson I had planned would fail...

He strongly encouraged teachers to overcome their fears of trying new things in their classrooms.
I faced similar fears when I first started golfing. I was to scared to go the the course because:

Fear immediately set in...
I was afraid that I would miss the ball on my tee shot...
I was afraid that I would 4 putt every hole...
I was afraid I would hit my drive into the wrong fairway...
I feared that I would have 8 groups waiting for me to finish my hole...

When I actually did go golfing, I realized that most players aren't that much better than I am and most players wait to make fun of you until you can't hear it... All of my fears were unfounded and I could have had a lot more fun hunting for those elusive birdies.

Blog post #2

This blog is entitled Living in the Cracks and is written by Amanda Kruysman a teacher near Charlotte, NC. Her blogpost also had an intriguing title I Quit that made me anxious to see what had her so fired up. Once again reading her post is well worth your time (it is a super engaging blog) but I will provide a brief synopsis:

Amanda is a super motivated educator who works hard to become the best educator. She is often met by resistance by people who are content to do the bare minimum and just get by, because they are scared she will raise expectations for them. I will give you an excerpt and a quote because they are both awesome!

...As teachers, we constantly fight the battle (whether we know/admit/like it or not) against the age old saying "Those who can't do, teach." I am as smart as my friends who are attorneys, medical students, veterinarians, and engineers. I could do anything I want to do, and what I want to do is teach. But there is this stigma that teachers JUST teach. ...
 When was the last time you told your students that the bare minimum was acceptable? 

I have one personal story about this. When I was at college at Wayne State College, I had a professor who told me that I was too smart to be a teacher and that students switch from health care to education only if they are struggling to keep up. ( I also had amazing professors that I loved like Dr. Christensen, Dr. Ettel, and Dr. Dilliard) Why aren't good science students encouraged to get into education?

When I started playing golf, it was with the intention of getting better. I knew my goal would not always be to finish a hole in 9 strokes or less. Shouldn't that be the same with our teaching? How can our goals remain the same from year to year?

Reflection
According to Mr. Badura's blogpost, the reason for this push-back that Amanda experienced is fear that they will have to change what they are doing. I have a slightly different hypothesis based on personal experience. It is also a 4 letter word, but instead of fear I think the word is LAZY. When I am exposed to a new idea for my classroom, I don't think about how scary it is, I think about how much work it would be to implement. Last year, my district volunteered me to be a part of ALP (we've all been volunteered before, right?). I had a horrible attitude, not because I was scared to implement these techniques, but because I was convinced it would be a lot of work and a waste of time. Thankfully it didn't take long for me to have an attitude adjustment, but it is kind of surprising how skeptical I was of something just from sheer laziness.

Amanda's blogpost reminded me of a recent conversation I had with my friend Darin Garfield. We both coach wrestling and we were discussing the use of a new term that drives both of us nuts. The term is "try hard" and I hear it used all the time in my Biology classroom. It is used to make a student (or athlete) who meets expectations feel like their efforts were a stupid waste of time. It is a new twist on the classic "teacher's pet." This is what students' do to make their lack of effort acceptable, but teachers do the exact same thing.

This year put in the extra effort to be the best teacher you can be. Do not let laziness slow you down. If it helps your students learn, put in the effort to make it happen. Do new things this year. Do all the things you have been considering, but never worked on. Do not be this guy...

Instead be this guy!!

#blogamonth goal setting

Goal #1: Build better relationships with my students. 

Last year my class had a reputation of being a difficult class, and I do not think I did a very good job of building relationships with these students. When I reflected on my teaching at the end of the year, I noticed there were lots of times when my main focus was to "just to get through the material." These are students that need personal connections, but due to my frustrations I failed to devote my time and energy building those connections. This year I have plans to improve on this essential facet of education. Here are some of my ideas to build these relationships:

1. Greet my students at the door everyday. Last year I was very focused on starting the class with a bellringer right away every day. Now that I have practiced that for a year, I think I will be able to emphasize welcoming students without losing class time.

2. Attend more extra-curricular activities. I know my students enjoy seeing their teachers at activities and will give me something to discuss when I welcome students. Last year it was difficult to attend fall sports because my wife coaches volleyball at a different school. Winter was tough because I coach wrestling and by the time spring rolled around I was just used to not going. This year it is a priority.

3. Be more interactive on social media. I have always tweeted class materials throughout the year but I was always a little worried about interacting with students. The few times I did interact with students, they were very excited about it and I know I can do a better job this year. I model being a good digital citizen on my twitter account, but if I don't interact with students they won't see that example. You can check out my twitter account @brandon_timm

Goal #2: Make my classroom accessible to anyone. 

Last year I attended Adolecent Literacy Project (ALP) and one of the presenters, Dr. Feldman talked about "deprivatizing education." I know the parents care about what their children are learning, but the most they get out of their children is that "school is fine." I want parents to be able to see exactly what their children are learning and how I am choosing to teach the material. I want other teachers in my district to see me implementing various engagement strategies so they have confidence using those strategies in their own class rooms. Here are my ideas for building a window into my classroom:

1. "Be a camera totin' teacher." I missed our last Breakfast Club on this topic, but I am very excited to to take more pictures in my classroom of what happens there. I would like to use these pictures to give students "twitter shout outs." I want to fill #ahsbio with examples of how awesome my students are.

2. I would also like to use my new website (http://mrtimmsbiology.weebly.com/) as a place to highlight these pictures as well. I think if parents can see their children learning, they will be able to ask better questions at home which, in turn, will hoe students learn as they explain concepts to their parents. 

3. I would like to record myself teaching and put in on the website regularly. First, ALP emphasized recording yourself as a way of providing feedback on what you are doing in the classroom. Also, this will be a great resource to any students who missed class. At Aurora, we have block scheduling which means when a student misses one day, they are significantly behind.

Goal #3: Provide opportunities for my students to experience the coolness of scientists

One of my biggest concerns is that I will cause my students to think they don't like science. It could be because they don't like me, the way I teach,  the topics we cover in sophomore biology, or the grade they received. I know lots of students who thought they hated a subject, but when they took it in college, they loved it. They didn't hate the subject, their high school teacher had let them down. Here are my ideas on how to remedy this problem:

1. Have my students participate in #scistuchat. As you can see, #scistuchat is a way for high school students to interact with superstar scientists who have dedicated their entire lives to the topic being discussed. For example, I am not particularly interested in sharks (probably because I live in Nebraska) @whysharksmatter who does a killer job promoting shark research and conservation. I would have been so jacked to make these connections when I was a high school student.

2. Some students do a lot better when they can meet people face to face. I have had the opportunity to skype with Erik Wilson, the education director at Wolf Haven International, a reserve that rescues wolves and wolf hybrids. My students were always extremely engaged during these Skypes and learned a ton. My goal this year is to get a scientist to skype or do a google hangout for my students every unit. I have made a Google Spreadsheet where you can add your name and contact information if you are a scientist and want to rock my students' worlds. Otherwise if you know of someone who might be interested' I would love to get in contact with them. My plan it to tweet all the units and see how many people respond and then tweet individual scientists at the start of the unit if no one has volunteered by then. 

I am very excited for the new school year and have set ambitious goals for myself. I am eager to get started and seeing the difference goal setting makes in my instruction!! If anyone has implemented any of these ideas, I would love to hear from you about your successes and difficulties! 

Thinglink Possibilities

An Intro to Thinglink

Thinglink is an app that allows you to choose a background picture and add text, pictures or video to areas of the picture to explain ideas. I first saw this app a few months ago when Mr. Phillips, a middle school math teacher here in Aurora tweeting examples of his students using it to explain math concepts. I thought it was pretty cool but didn't spend any time messing around with it. Then yesterday we had a Breakfast Club with Mr. Badura about app smashing. One of the ideas Mr. Badura was excited about was app die. You roll the die and whatever apps come up, you use those apps to do the assignment. In our example Word Clouds and Thinglink came up. Our assignment was to describe our summer and this is what I came up with. Summer

Using Thinglink in my Biology classroom

Last night, as I laying in bed watching lightening every 5 seconds, I finally had time to think about Thinglink in my classroom. The more I thought about it the more excited I got about its implications in helping students learn biology. I came up with 3 different uses for Thinglink.

#1 Taking notes

In biology we use a lot of diagrams to explain complicated processes. Thinglink would be a great way to annotate the diagram because it is more organizes than writing off to the side and you can see the diagram better than if you add a ton of text boxes to it. This would work for glycolysis, Kreb's cycle, electron transport chain, light dependent reactions, Calvin cycle, parts of a cell and the list goes on. Here is an example of how Thinglink could be used to take notes over the parts of a cell. Cell Structures Chromosome Information

#2 Exit Ticket

Thinglink would be a great way check that students understand the main learning onjective for the day. In our discussion of evolution, we discuss the 3 main types of adaptations according to  Nebraska State Standard 12.3.4a The last 10 minutes of class I could have this exit ticket: save a picture of an organism to your camera roll. Use Thinglink to identify and explain at least 1 morphological adaptation, 1 physiological adaptation and 1 behavioral adaptation. Here is an example that I made in 10 minutes about a snapping turtle. Snapping Turtle

#3 Assignment

The last way I thought of to use Thinglink is to use it as an assignment. During our genetics unit I have an assignment with a strand of RNA and a strand of DNA and the students have to show 3 ways they are different. They could use thing Thinglink to do that assignment quicker and better. The nice thing about this is even after they turn in the assignment, they can still use the assignment to study and learn the material.

These are the ways I plan on using Thinglink in my classroom next year! Do you have any different ways you use Thinglink, or examples of what you have done in the past? Or can you think of ways to make my ideas better? I would love to hear from you in the comments section!

Blog a Month "sharpening the saw"

#blogamonth

I stopped by the school this morning to attend a summer professional development opportunity that our school offers on a weekly basis. Mr. Badura, our technology integration coach, hosts/moderates an hour long session, called The Breakfast Club on various topics throughout the summer. He mentioned the #blogamonth challenge and I thought it would be a great way to get back into blogging. 

Summer Growth Plan #1

My first goal for this summer is to attend as many Breakfast Clubs as possible.  always has great information prepared and makes a concerted effort to make sure he doesn't just sit and talk. He allows us teachers to question and explain, which is great because then we learn what we want to learn rather than what he thinks is important. I have found that I am confident about most of the topics and some of the information is below my level. However, the main reason I want to attend is to spend time with Mr. Badura. He has such a passion for teaching that I always leave more excited about teahing than when I got there. His excitement is contagious and he is a real asset to our school. No matter what the topic is supposed to be, he finds a way to excite me about something new. 

@mrbadura

Summer Learning Goal #2

I don't want to gush too much so I'll limit myself to one more Mr. Badura shoutout. He is also offering individualized instruction where we can meet with him to work on whatever we need to. 

My goal is to create a website for myself so I can post information and resources there for my students, their parents and any science teachers that are interested. 

Summer Learning Goal #3

I teach 11 units throughout the semester. I would like to get 1 professional in each area to talk to my students. I always am concerned that my students will think they hate science because they don't like me, my teaching style, or their classmates. That's why I try to expose them to other scientists, who are way cooler than I am, so that their natural love of science can overcome their dislike for me. Here are my units and what I have set up so far.

Summer Learning Goal #4

Someone (who I won't mention by name) posted these 5 goals for the summer. 

I am planning on doing every other one starting with the first one. 

Summer Learning Goal #5

My final goal is to regularly check twitter and zite for articles that would fit in my units. I want to get my students reading about science in a setting they would be in after high school which are internet articles.