Day One Rocked

After the usual three days of professional torture, my students came for classes on Thursday and Friday. I was ready and they were ready. Sometimes you get it right as a teacher, and this was one of those times.

One of the sessions of professional torture that was not so bad was when the faculty in groups of about 10 stacked shoes in the Commons. I used that idea in class. Each student was given an index card with a color dot on it as they entered. After Ready, Set, Go and Roll Call, I told them to organize in colors and stand together with their cards raised. It was a contest to see which class could organize themselves the faster. The winning time was sixteen seconds! Here are some of the results:

The first thing they did was write their Ready, Set, Go – some people call it do now or bell ringer. I like to say what it is intended to do – get them ready to go into the day’s learning. The prompt was what is science in general? and what is physical science in particular? After ten minutes I did the roll call. In keeping with common core and oral and written communication, I have each student make their first mini-speech – say their name and read their best sentence. I asked the students with really good sentences to write them on an index card with their name. Then I had a student staple, “publish” them on the class bulletin board.

Finally we had our first lab. I passed out this mysterious powder and had students guess what it was. Most said it was flour or baking soda. About ten per cent guessed right and said it was cornstarch. We went outside and mixed it with water to form a non-Newtonian fluid called oobleck. When you hold it in your hand it oozes. When you squeeze it, it becomes a solid. Release, ooze, and squeeze, hard. It can be tossed like a ball. All had great fun. When they returned to the classroom they wrote about the properties of oobleck.

So there was the first day. Students wrote and spoke informally and formally and some were even published. Students had a kinesthetic get-to-know-each-other activity with stacking shoes – a pretty intimate encounter with bare feet and stinky shoes. Students got to investigate their first inquiry – what is it lab (I did not tell them what it was or how it would behave when mixed).  Then they got to explain the results.

It is going to be an interesting year.