Week One Completed!

Phew! When our district decided to switch the first week to a full 5 day week rather than beginning on a Wednesday it really makes a difference. I am exhausted, and I think the students are too. But it was a good week considering. 

• Considering I have much larger classes this year, so about an extra 15 students total to fit into my room, and help get adjusted to Middle School. 

• Considering our online assessment site is not up and running yet, so we were not able to start our battery of pre-testing on time, and are still awaiting when we will be able to fit that into our schedule.

• Considering I had to "all at the last minute" switch my lessons and class information over to a new Moodle website, that IT just installed and got up and running the last week of summer.

I have a great group of students to work with this year, I can already tell. That made my week great. I also have some wonderful parents who are already asking to help, bringing in donations and using our email and online grade system to keep their students up to date. I love involved parents! 

So this past week I spent my time showing the students the Moodle website, where I store all their assignments, to include the videos for my flipped lessons. We practiced watching a video in class, and writing up a summary of what they learned from the video, and we also practiced our vocabulary format for bellwork that I have instituted this year. And I set up my first Curiosity Corner with a complicated series of flasks and tubing bubbling away for them to identify what on earth Mrs Neill was trying to do with her crazy experiment. They seemed to love that! Classroom procedures? They are getting it, slowly but surely. 

Next week we are doing a series of lab activities to hone their use of basic equipment and accurate measurements, and they have their first video to watch at home. We shall see how many students do their homework on time this first week! 

Over and Out... Commander Neill