I had THE worst science class I've taught in years with the 7-8th graders. Ugh. The plan: three stations they'd finish in a half an hour; one lab I would supervise, one they'd do on their own (or I'd pop back and forth between), and an independent activity about wind/ocean currents. On paper, a great plan. Reality, not so much.
First, they were fired up from unnecessary roughness at recess. Then, they didn't like the groups I picked. Thus, the experiment began with bad attitudes. Then the instructions of the tricky lab weren't super clear, so it didn't work right and nothing happened. And since I'd done it in the past, I hadn't tested it ahead of time (ugh, huge mistake there), so I was trying to figure out what the problem was, bouncing back and forth between all three groups and everyone was annoyed. Including me.
Eventually, I gave up and just had them all come over to one station and we did it together. Then we did a revamped version of the other one. Ugh. They were all still pouty and whiny, but at least they got the main concept of the lab. Salty water sinks, fresh floats. In between goes in between. I wrote a bunch of notes about the lab so it won't happen next time.
Now for a positive: It's spirit week before our home basketball tournament, and today's dress up day was Career Day (Monday was PJ Day, Tuesday was Jersey Day... I wore my Croatia soccer jersey). A ton of kids dressed up as teachers! My favorite was a 1st grade boy who came to school in glasses and a scarf to be a teacher "just like Miss H!" Cue melting heart. His mom is a teacher too, and she was super confused why he had to wear glasses and a scarf to be a teacher. Mrs. L told her, "He's modeling Miss H; she always wears scarves and glasses to school." (My computer glasses to be exact). My other favorite career is the 5th grader in my class who came as a dad. He wore a baby carrier with a baby doll in it. Such a great idea!
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