First Science Assessment and Guest Speaker

Right before break I wrapped up the first section of my anatomy and physiology class, the section on the muscular and skeletal systems. To teach this class, I decided to use case models to get the basics of structure and function to stick. For the muscular and skeletal systems I focused on the knee and its components. For their assessment, I took students two at a time and had them perform a patient/doctor "skit" where they had to fill in the blanks of the scripts to demonstrate their understanding.

Overall, I think the assessment I chose worked fairly well. The students who had been coming to class, working and paying attention seemed to get through the skit smoothly and scored well. Not surprisingly, the students who had skipped and tuned out scored poorly. I'm going to give the kids their scores next week and have them reflect in their portfolios on how well they believe they met the targets for those first 3 weeks. I want them to have more substantial reflections and documentation of the A&P class than they did from the Planet Earth class.

After I got through all of the assessments, I had Karen from Steadman-Hawkins come in and do a powerpoint on the knee for the kids. Karen was there for just under an hour and kept most of the students' attention for her entire presentation. I think the kids were engaged because they could relate to the material Karen was presenting; they had already learned a lot about it. Karen did a really nice job of showing how the information I had taught them was applicable in a career. For our kids, I think that really hit home. I was really happy I'd made the effort to bring in a professional to talk with them!

In closing, I'd just like to say that I feel like this trimester has flowed a lot more smoothly than last semester did. I have a better understanding of where I'm going, what I'm teaching and ways to teach the students the information. I'm looking forward to seeing even more progress in the coming months!

New Trimester

Yesterday was the first day for second trimester at our high school. It's always refreshing to start something new and I feel like the first day of classes went remarkably well. The kids were well behaved and engaged in class activities. They participated and asked questions, and in general seemed to enjoy the assignments, (yes, even in Anatomy and Physiology).

I'm just amazed by how much smoother "take-off" was for this tri. I look at the disaster of a start that I had last trimester and have to laugh at myself. Teaching is definitely a learning process, and being that I'm a newbie at it, I'm paying special attention to what techniques are successful and what one's are not. I already feel like things are falling into place much more easily with this term. It'll be interesting to see the progress by the start of third tri!