"So Good So Right This is One Night I'm Wishing I Could Rewind" 3-2-1 Sunday Summary Week 5

My Sunday 3-2-1 Summary

3 things that happened this week:

• I took the 7th graders to the lab for the first time this week.  I think it went fairly well.  They definitely need to move more swiftly, or at least a subgroup does.  I estimate that we will lose about 4 min. of class time when we need to use it.  Also, my class with 25 is definitely more clunky than the smaller classes.  I don't know how some of you with larger classes than that continue to manage groups and still do hands-on safely.  I have been lucky so far and have not had to deal with overage for an extended period of time.
• 7th Grade just barely started their Cell Theory Fakebook project.  I added to it with some ideas that I saw from another teacher and tried to modify issues I noticed last year.  I am hopeful for good products this year and of course, increased student understanding.  I found a foldable, sort of, from TPT that I am going to use to support some main ideas from this project.
• We had an assembly for an ALS fundraiser.  Due to the weather, teacher had pies thrown in their face.  All was well until the last teacher had a pie shoved hard in her face.  I was disappointed that the student chose to act in that manner.  All the other participants had fun with, but were fairly gentle with it.  Our goal was $1000, but I don't think we quite reached it.  I don't think it was advertised to the JH as well as it may have been with HS and Elem.

 2 things I'm looking forward to:

• I will be taking the 8th graders to the lab for the first time this year, probably tomorrow!
• 8th graders will start the Light & Color Lab.  I think I figured out how to make the stations work for the time that we absolutely have to be in the lab.  I also am making some modifications, more discussion and review exercises as we go along with the lab.

1 thing that made me smile this week: 

• This year, I have three ESL students that speak little to no English in my 7th grade science group.  I feel mostly ok working with the two boys because they speak Spanish and I have some grasp of the language.  However, I also have a Somali girl.  I have a harder time communicating with her because Google translate doesn't always have the dialect she needs.  I do have four other Somali students that can help, but they are also at various levels of English language acquisition so I don't want to rely on them too much.  Anyway, on Friday this Somali girl stopped before leaving class and said, "See you on Monday!"  I was so surprised, it made me smile and she smiled too!