Thursday, January 10, 2008

Two days in a row!



Man, I'm on a streak this week. Today I decided to go all progressive on my biology class. We are starting a big anatomy/physiology unit and today I let them explore tissues. I set up three stations in the class. One was just microscopes with slides of different human tissues. Another was computers with an interactive website about tissues (an awesome site I might add). The last was textbooks opened up to the introductory section of the anatomy chapter in their biology books. They spent 15 minutes at each station. I wish I would have counted all the "WHOA's and WOW's and EWWW's" They were all asking for my help, and asking questions and acting like real students! It was great. I asked them to answer three questions in their lab notebooks: What is/are tissue(s)? What types of tissues are there? What do tissues look like? I told them they could use each station however they wanted as long as they figured those three things out. They naturally drew what they saw in the microscopes, looked up the answers in the textbook, and simply enjoyed all the cool interactive features of the website. Talk about differentiated instruction (you should be able to hear the sound of me tooting my own horn faintly in the distance). I'm so happy with their performance today that I'm rewarding them with a day of watching "Planet Earth" tomorrow.

In other school news, I canceled Student Art Society for today, parent teacher conferences up and bit me in the ace (I thought they are next week...crap). Also, I still generally feel like poop. My nose has become a free dripping faucet, my chest has a 100 lb. weight on it, and my head feels so big that I may tip over. Last night I got all quacked out on TheraFlu Severe Cold and Flu and watched KNIGHT RIDER first season on DVD. Hasslehoff is a joke now a days, but I tell you what, that homeboy used to be one wicked action star. Who else could pull off driving a computer enhanced car in the eighties! I mean computers were still so big in the eighties that they could take up whole rooms. Also, I realize now in retrospect that many of the feature of K.I.T.T. (the talking car) were simply made up. I could digress into a well thought out and expert analysis of the show Knight Rider and the Knight Industry's K.I.T.T. car but unfortunately I don't believe many of you had the blessing of watching this show in its natural time of the eighties.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

kale,
Yeah, I know that I'm pretty lucky to have had so many guests... what can I say.
So what is this fantastic website about the human body? I was going to move into anatomy for next semester as well. We were just wrapping up genetics. We've touched a bit on evolution (specifically human evolution when we watched "Journey of Man") but i think that it needs more coverage. I am nervous about teaching it: Not so much because of I fear retribution or anger from the community, but because I am afraid that I might not do it justice. That's because I fall in the creationist camp. I do have deep respect for the logic and straightforwardness of evolution, and if I can portray at least that to the students (that evolutionist are not all crazy anti-god weirdos) I will be happy.

Anyway, I am getting a really different schedule next semester: Eco, Bio, 2 sections of JH science, one math pick-up, and health. better than all the polycom

Chrissy said...

i love it when the kids have fun learning. that's how it should be. mine love having time to look through art history books. i think that's funny. i understand it, but i still think it's funny.

feel better soon,
Chrissy

Anonymous said...

I don't know if you give your readers enough credit, Kale. I have been lucky enough to have watched Knight Rider when it originally aired in the eighties. I have dreamed about having a KITT car my whole life. That is my ultimate life goal...a talking, computer-controlled car that can drive for me. That, my friend, is when I will know that I have made it and my life is complete.

I got this comment in an email and I just had to share it because it was so cool! I'll leave the commenter nameless until they choose to come forward

-Kale


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