In AP Biology today, we started with reviewing the major players of a replication fork. We did some genetics review and did an overview of transcription and translation. Tomorrow we go to homeroom to do some prep for the upcoming ACT exam next Tuesday. We will continue our study of transcription and translation tomorrow.
Selected Topics - We had a guest speaker from the Army today. In addition we discussed some strategies when taking the ACT science section and took a sample reading passage. Tomorrow we continue with some ACT prep and graphing problems.
Softball was on the field today ... we worked on catcher throw downs, stealing, baserunning, 1-3 situations and signaling. We have our first scrimmage on Saturday morning ... the Beech Play Day.
rr
Monday, March 7, 2011
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Saturday at the beehive construction factory! 400+ frames!
I am so far behind with two AP sections and softball that I had some students come out to paint supers and build frames. It was a big day ... a good breakfast of barnyard casserole (one of my few specialties) and lunch at the store at Amos.
We built over 400 frames for medium supers and painted forty supers with three coats of paint and primer. Below are two picts ... the assembly line with Thaxton, Jared and Daniel ... the second pict is less than half the forms we built ... I will have to find time to put in the foundation later.
We built over 400 frames for medium supers and painted forty supers with three coats of paint and primer. Below are two picts ... the assembly line with Thaxton, Jared and Daniel ... the second pict is less than half the forms we built ... I will have to find time to put in the foundation later.
The Elephants in the Classroom ...
During the past week, Bill Bennett and Bill Gates gave their illuminating thoughts on the state of education and America's teachers. Pundits both. Everyone has an opinion.
The saying ... "you can never pay good teacher enough and all the rest are overpaid" continues to apply. Whatever the argument about pay and teacher tenure (any teacher can be removed if incompetent and the administrator wants to take the time to document the incompetency ... or, perceived incompetence ... my cousin needs a job, aka KY), teaching is now much more than regurgitating of facts and concepts ... or it should be!
Many children come to high school hungry. A few students do not have electricity or choose not to use it. Teenage pregnancies are numerous and in some weird way acceptable and desired. A few students have more than one child. There are drugs both prescribed and other. Students now have many labels to identify their problems and perceived problems which, ends up defining them. Many high school students are not readers or read poorly. Many have jobs to help support their car, car insurance and gasoline (now going to $4) habit. Computer games, facebook, texting, cable TV with 1000 channels and on and on ...
All elephants dancing around the room of education but, rarely if ever mentioned. We instead spin our wheels tweeking the curriculum, learning goals, standards and then the NEW standards and every gimmick some retired administrator, curriculum expert or medicine man (person) comes up with ... of course for $$$.
A teacher now has to ... in some way ... convince students that education and the content they are being taught is important in some way either now or later ... THE BUY IN! Sometimes this only takes the first day and sometimes it never happens because of one or more elephants above.
Then there is THE SHOW! If you can't compete at the level of a great TV show or video or song ... then you get tuned out ... this means you better have some great labs and learning events to keep their attention and it all better be relevant in some way ... still an elephant might not make that student available on any given day or week ... THE SHOW is very important and it can't be a long running show ... you must have a repertoire of shows! Learning for a grade? That is history!
Then as testing begins you arrive at THE SELL! This is convincing students that in some way it is in their, their families', their children's or the communities' best interest to try on the test (that's what politicians and many pundits consider evidence of learning ... if they can test ... ACT, CATS, TBA or ???)
THE BUY, THE SHOW, THE SELL ... that is teaching!
I really like teaching ... there is something to fix each day, just like when I use to be a farmer. Providing opportunities for young people is a worthy use of my life and an honorable way to make a living. I am from a farm family and making an honorable living is important to me.
I cannot figure out what to do about the elephants in the classroom. You talk with kids and hope a good education and pointing them in a direction to continue their education or find a profession can help them rise above the herd. It takes generations to fix some problems.
rr
The saying ... "you can never pay good teacher enough and all the rest are overpaid" continues to apply. Whatever the argument about pay and teacher tenure (any teacher can be removed if incompetent and the administrator wants to take the time to document the incompetency ... or, perceived incompetence ... my cousin needs a job, aka KY), teaching is now much more than regurgitating of facts and concepts ... or it should be!
Many children come to high school hungry. A few students do not have electricity or choose not to use it. Teenage pregnancies are numerous and in some weird way acceptable and desired. A few students have more than one child. There are drugs both prescribed and other. Students now have many labels to identify their problems and perceived problems which, ends up defining them. Many high school students are not readers or read poorly. Many have jobs to help support their car, car insurance and gasoline (now going to $4) habit. Computer games, facebook, texting, cable TV with 1000 channels and on and on ...
All elephants dancing around the room of education but, rarely if ever mentioned. We instead spin our wheels tweeking the curriculum, learning goals, standards and then the NEW standards and every gimmick some retired administrator, curriculum expert or medicine man (person) comes up with ... of course for $$$.
A teacher now has to ... in some way ... convince students that education and the content they are being taught is important in some way either now or later ... THE BUY IN! Sometimes this only takes the first day and sometimes it never happens because of one or more elephants above.
Then there is THE SHOW! If you can't compete at the level of a great TV show or video or song ... then you get tuned out ... this means you better have some great labs and learning events to keep their attention and it all better be relevant in some way ... still an elephant might not make that student available on any given day or week ... THE SHOW is very important and it can't be a long running show ... you must have a repertoire of shows! Learning for a grade? That is history!
Then as testing begins you arrive at THE SELL! This is convincing students that in some way it is in their, their families', their children's or the communities' best interest to try on the test (that's what politicians and many pundits consider evidence of learning ... if they can test ... ACT, CATS, TBA or ???)
THE BUY, THE SHOW, THE SELL ... that is teaching!
I really like teaching ... there is something to fix each day, just like when I use to be a farmer. Providing opportunities for young people is a worthy use of my life and an honorable way to make a living. I am from a farm family and making an honorable living is important to me.
I cannot figure out what to do about the elephants in the classroom. You talk with kids and hope a good education and pointing them in a direction to continue their education or find a profession can help them rise above the herd. It takes generations to fix some problems.
rr
Friday, March 4, 2011
3000 swings and Friday ends a big week!
We hit at BSA this afternoon ... about 3000 swings ... tees, front toss and the three plate drill with a pitching machine. Everyone is in a good routine and our players that do not have the opportunity to hit in the off season have been making good progress. One week until our first scrimmage ... Beech Play Day / hosted by Beech HS (TN). By Saturday we will be ready to put in on the field with someone besides our intrasquads.
Next week looks good for getting on the field a lot ... except for Wednesday ... will try and get up to BSA on the rainy day.
In AP Biology, we worked through most of Chapters 15-16 ... linkage, non-disjunction and the events leading up to the discovery of DNA ... The first of next week ... Crick's Central Dogma ... Replication, Transcription and Translation. Later in the week we will do our Restriction Lab and start our Drosophila crosses. We are working hard to make up the content from miss days during the snows.
In Selected Topics in Science, we finished our unit on Astronomy ... some vocab and H-R diagramming of stars by luminosity and temperature ... Test next Tuesday and we will review on Monday. The Catapult Lab is on the horizon.
Hope you all have a great weekend!!!
rr
Next week looks good for getting on the field a lot ... except for Wednesday ... will try and get up to BSA on the rainy day.
In AP Biology, we worked through most of Chapters 15-16 ... linkage, non-disjunction and the events leading up to the discovery of DNA ... The first of next week ... Crick's Central Dogma ... Replication, Transcription and Translation. Later in the week we will do our Restriction Lab and start our Drosophila crosses. We are working hard to make up the content from miss days during the snows.
In Selected Topics in Science, we finished our unit on Astronomy ... some vocab and H-R diagramming of stars by luminosity and temperature ... Test next Tuesday and we will review on Monday. The Catapult Lab is on the horizon.
Hope you all have a great weekend!!!
rr
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Another long day ... and a pict!
These double practices with our newly formed freshman team is killing me and making for getting home pretty late.
Today in softball we had a group picture of the seniors taken professionally ... Macey came in for the picture and we were all glad to see her back in uniform. I believe she could play short from a bucket if she had to .... it is great to have her out at the field!
In practice, we worked a lot on outfield drills and coverages for bunts in both sessions.
In AP Biology today ... Happy Birthday Lauren! ... We looked at some free responses from previous AP tests. In addition, we worked in genetics and went over some odds and ends vocabulary in genetics. In first block we went on a short tour to sing, "DNA BABY!" ... since we are starting on our study of the discovery of DNA ... Chapter 16.
We had several people out of Selected Topics in Science to a job fair. The remaining students and I went outside and built a model to scale of the solar system using the a softball for the sun ... at this scale, former planet, Pluto was 400 yards away. We hope to wrap up our study of astronomy tomorrow with some H-R diagram problems.
Goodnight!
rr
Today in softball we had a group picture of the seniors taken professionally ... Macey came in for the picture and we were all glad to see her back in uniform. I believe she could play short from a bucket if she had to .... it is great to have her out at the field!
In practice, we worked a lot on outfield drills and coverages for bunts in both sessions.
In AP Biology today ... Happy Birthday Lauren! ... We looked at some free responses from previous AP tests. In addition, we worked in genetics and went over some odds and ends vocabulary in genetics. In first block we went on a short tour to sing, "DNA BABY!" ... since we are starting on our study of the discovery of DNA ... Chapter 16.
We had several people out of Selected Topics in Science to a job fair. The remaining students and I went outside and built a model to scale of the solar system using the a softball for the sun ... at this scale, former planet, Pluto was 400 yards away. We hope to wrap up our study of astronomy tomorrow with some H-R diagram problems.
Goodnight!
rr
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
A Pict, Punnett Squares, Solar System and a late practice ...
Today during AP second block, we had a guest from last year's AP Bio class in for some tutoring ... Bradley was a great bio student and of course a 5! Here is a pict of one of his favorite students to help ... B-Gun ...
The tutoring must have worked since she her quiz score today was higher!
We worked in AP Biology on more genetic problems and Chi Square Analysis of Data.
In Selected Topics, we started our modeling lab of our solar system. Tomorrow we will go outside a build the model using a softball as the sun and scaling the rest of the solar system object to it. It should be fun! We will finish our solar system unit on Friday.
We had a teacher's PD until 5:00 and varsity softball practice afterwards ... finishing up late under the lights. Tomorrow we are back on schedule with all players attending practice.
rr
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
AP starts Genetics and 2000+ swings!
We are into the genetics portion of our AP course. We should be able to make good progress since many of the students took our Genetics class last fall. Tomorrow we are going over several genetic problems in class, pedigrees and Chi Square Analysis. Our Drosophila Lab will be next week.
In Selected Topics we continued our study of Astronomy. We have an lab for Thursday ... solar system modeling lab.
Our softball team hit at BSA this afternoon ... with tee work well over 2000 swings. Several players have already improved in the batting cage ... we worked a lot today on batting posture and swing mechanics. Tomorrow's practice is late since I have a PD after school from 3-5. Varsity practice will start at 5:00 PM and all other players will not practice tomorrow. Back to our original schedule on Thursday.
rr
In Selected Topics we continued our study of Astronomy. We have an lab for Thursday ... solar system modeling lab.
Our softball team hit at BSA this afternoon ... with tee work well over 2000 swings. Several players have already improved in the batting cage ... we worked a lot today on batting posture and swing mechanics. Tomorrow's practice is late since I have a PD after school from 3-5. Varsity practice will start at 5:00 PM and all other players will not practice tomorrow. Back to our original schedule on Thursday.
rr
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