Glue + Scissors + Seventh Graders = Chaos

I think I'm losing my mind.

Last year, Mrs. Eagle and I piloted science notebooks in a few of our classes to see how they went.  Well, they went great so we're going full speed ahead with our science notebooks for all our classes this year.

The problem is, apparently cutting and gluing (correctly) is a bit beyond some of my kids this year.

I have never - never - seen such a disaster in the making.  These kids, despite me modeling it over and over and over on the document reader, can't seem to cut and glue things into their notebook without making a disaster out of it.  I had foldable flaps glued in upside down, inside pockets glued all the way shut rather than on two sides only, notebook tabs cut in half and glued upside down, you name it.  It's been, shall we say, a challenge.

And then when you get my seventh period (which, I'm starting to think is the class that all the rather "interesting" and quite low kids got stuck into), you get an absolute nightmare. When Happy Boy is the star student in the class, you've got issues.

Obviously, the million times I say, "look at the screen and watch what I do!" is going in one ear and out the other.

And then of course you get the goober who decides to see what happens when you pour glue in the palm of your hand.

(What happens is Mrs. Bluebird pulls you into the hall and explains to you that we do not act like four-year-olds in seventh grade, and that we use the glue for our notebooks, not for decorating our hands, and if you ever do anything like that again, I'm calling your mother.  THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING. )

Oh good gracious.

All I Ask is For a Little Effort

Sigh.

We finally - finally - had five whole days in a row this week and weren't interrupted by weather, holidays, or zombies running in the streets.  It felt wonderful to get back into the flow of things and to finally get our genetics unit covered.

I finished grading all the tests on Thursday evening and entered the grades in PowerSchool.  I was hoping that I'd see some good results because, firstly, we've been covering this unit for over a month although it has been interrupted a lot.  Secondly, the classes that are test-driving the notebooks were allowed to use their notebooks during the test and the other classes could use their notes.

The results were, in a word, ugly.

Many students completely bombed the vocabulary test because they absolutely refuse to learn the words we use in science.  Genetics has a lot of key words that if you don't know what they mean, you won't be able to answer the test questions.  Homozygous, heterozygous, genotype, phenotype, allele, and so on.  We went over, and over, and over these words and did project after project using these words, but when it came down to their test, they absolutely croaked.  What made it worse, is that in order to answer the Punnett Sqaure questions, they had to know the difference between these words or they'd just mess it up beyond belief.  What annoyed me even more is even with all the time we spend going over how to answer a test question (underline key words being one huge strategy), only ONE STUDENT even did that when it came to the Punnett Square word problems.  So, not only did they not know the vocabulary (after nearly six weeks) but they didn't even bother to underline the important features of the questions.

They just failed miserably.  And half the test we did in class, so all they had to do was pull out their notes and simply copy them.  Very few kids had their notes out for their test, and even some of the notebook kids never once opened their notebooks.

So they tanked.

On an aside, for those of you who were wondering, Wiggly Boy did a bit better.  He didn't pass, but he didn't fail nearly as bad as some of the others.  And he was the one who prompted a discussion we had about personal responsibility on Friday when he told the class, "Well, I didn't bother to study at all so it was my fault I failed."

As I told them, I can't follow them home and make sure they do their homework.  I can't follow them home to make sure they study.  That's their parents' job.  And if their parents aren't doing their job, then they're just going to have to sit back and realize that they have the tools at their disposal to be successful if they only had the personal responsibility to use them.  It is up to them.  If they think they're worth success, then that's what they need to work for.  I believe every one of them can be successful, but they're going to have to start working towards that goal.

We have a much shorter unit (and hopefully no more snow days) so we'll see if they do any better this time.  Some of them, perhaps, have learned that using your notes, when Mrs. Bluebird says you can, is not a waste of time.

But I truly am at my wits' end on what it takes to get these kids - and their parents - to care as much about their learning as I do.

For Those Who Inquired - Science Notebooks and Weber Grills

I love it when you guys leave comments!

First off, Jessie left a comment asking about my science notebooks.  First off, I'm not an expert.  At all.  In fact, I've done science notebooks for a whopping two days.  However, I'll lead you to some of my resources.  First off is Dinah Zike's book "Dinah Zike's Notebook Foldables for Spirals, Binders & Composition Books"  We have used her foldable techniques for years and one thing Mrs. Eagle and I did not want to get rid of were foldables - we saw this book at the NSTA conference in December, and attended one of the conference workshops that her organization put on about doing science notebooks.  That workshop may have been the best one I've attended in ages.  Now we know how to keep doing foldables and at the same time, utilize notebooks.

Mrs. Eagle also went to an in-service (I was supposed to go but my father was in the hospital) where another teacher in our district shared his notebook ideas.  There are lots of teachers out there who do them.  If you are a member of NSTA, you can go on their website and find a lot of things.  Also, Google them like mad.  You come across a lot of resources that way.  And of course, one of my favorite bloggers, But Wait! There's More!, does a lot with notebooks so you may want to check out her site.  (And if you aren't interested in notebooks, check out her site anyway).

As for the Weber Grill...My mother refuses to get my husband books for Christmas.  She feels, rightly so, that we have run out of room at our house for books so she won't buy any for him.  He loves to cook out, and really needed a decent, larger grill.  So, she got him a grill for Christmas...

Okay, let me back up and explain why it's a Weber grill.  A few years ago, Mother Dear was transporting her grill to a BBQ her GOP ladies were putting on at a blackberry farm.  She had the grill in the back of her little pickup and took a turn a bit too fast (for a grill) and looked in the rear view mirror just in time to see her nearly new Weber grill go sailing out of the bed of her truck and bounce down the street.  She was sure she had just ruined her grill and was not happy.  Anyhow, she stopped, went back, picked up her grill only to discover that not only was it still in two pieces (grill and lid) but they weren't even dinged or dented.  The lid still fit perfectly on the grill!  We've pretty much decided after that experience that Weber grills were the best made around.

Okay, so Mr. Bluebird gets a grill for Christmas and it was sitting there in a big box in my living room.  For about 3 days.  I kept hoping he'd get a clue and either assemble it himself, or something.  However, I'm the one in the family with most of the tools, so one morning I decided to go ahead and put the thing together myself. If not, it probably would still be in my living room.  It was remarkably easy.  I had it together in about half and hour, and had it put out on the deck (complete with cover) by the time Mr. Bluebird rolled out of bed.

I also am good at fixing toilets.

We're back....

So I didn't post much (at all) during my Christmas break, mainly because I didn't have that much to post about (honestly how exciting is it to hear me talk about how my dad and I went to every place you can purchase a tool of some kind within a radius of about 20 miles? Or how I managed to assemble a Weber grill?  Or how I still woke up at 5:00 every morning but managed to take a nap?  And how many bowl games I managed to watch?).  We had a delightful time off, I did very little school work, went and saw the latest Harry Potter movie, read, knitted, napped and enjoyed my time away from the classroom.  Hanging out with Hubby, Dad and the felines was a great deal of fun.

But today, we're back.  Actually teachers came back yesterday and did in-service most of the day (which was actually interesting and informative) and Mrs. Eagle and I managed to get everything copied and prepared for the rest of our heredity and genetics unit.  Whoo-hoo!  Love to be prepared.  Considering that we couldn't even remember if we'd done lesson plans before we left for break (we did), that's a plus.

We gained (so far) a new student, a sixth grader who's being promoted into seventh who is a good student, a polite young man and an absolute delight.  What a relief.  I'm used to getting kids that no one wants.

The other good news is we lost one.  Yes, Very Mean Bully Boy, came back today to officially withdraw.  He will still be doing his 30 days in alternative school but when that's done, he'll be in another school across town.  Let's give mom credit for moving him out of that horrid gang-and-thug-infested apartment complex down the road and shifting them across town to a better neck of the woods.  However, they are both in for a rude awakening because the folks at the school across town aren't used to dealing with thugs like VMBB and and he's certainly not used to them.  He is, however, no longer my problem and I can enjoy doing hall duty without worrying about who his latest victim is going to be.

The kids, by the way, were relieved.  It was like a different atmosphere today.

And today, Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Hummingbird and I debuted for a few of our classes the New Science Notebooks!!

The good news is we didn't fall flat on our faces.

We've been kicking around the idea of doing science notebooks for a year or so, but really didn't get too motivated until we went to the NSTA conference and hit up some workshops on them.  We decided to go ahead and "test drive" them for two of our classes, our 3rd (lots of sped kids) and our 5th (lots of bright kids) and see how they go.  The Principal found the money in the budget to buy composition books for the kids and we also got a few new pairs of scissors, as well as some liquid glue (glue sticks, we were told, don't work as well).    The idea is to work out the kinks this year, then go ahead and start the year off with them next year.

The kids seemed to like them except for a few who see a composition book and assume they'll be doing nothing but writing in them.  Oh well.  We'll see how it goes.

The other good thing?  I only had 4 kids forget their locker combinations - that's pretty darn good!