And number 8 :-)...

Showed the Dove Evolution video to my daughter, and even in tweendom, it got a reaction. 
The photoshopping part was what took me most by surprise...

I met a middle science school teacher recently  who said she didn't have the time or inclination to look at youtube, and I wanted to tell her how cool it really, really, really  is.  When I revise the lesson plan that Shannon, Navreet and I worked on, I want to more specifically mention how bike riders should assume that drivers do not see them.  Shannon covered this, but it wasn't explicit in the lesson.  At any rate, I though I might use the basketball bouncing video from youtube to introduce the idea:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfA3ivLK_tE   (and as I looked up the link, I notice it was created specifically for bicycle awareness -- there you go...)

I loved the various bags of tricks we saw in class - like the "stand on the line" and bag of sex ed words today, and the jump rope rhymes from last week.  I'm still figuring out a way that will work for me keep track of them long-term.  Maybe evernote...

Food blog

Food blog and change…

Keeping the food journal for a week made me not only more aware of what I was eating, but more aware of what my whole family was eating.  We have never really gotten into a rhythm for cooking dinner since the summer classes started, and often for dinner we go to the supermarket and pick out individual servings of separate things from the deli or salad bar.  Not things that were hugely unhealthy, but still, each of us tended to get the same thing time after time, so we were missing variety.  We also weren’t eating many vegetables,  though we were getting lots of fruit.

The change that the food journal got me to make was to start planning the week’s dinners ahead of time.  This past weekend my husband, my daughter and I worked together to make the schedule for the week.  Part of the reason we had stopped doing this was that everyone likes very different things.  My daughter turned vegetarian a couple months ago, my husband could live on roasted chicken, and if I never ate chicken again in my life, that would be ok with me.  We made a plan that everyone could live with.

So how did it work out?  Sunday night we didn’t follow it.  We’d had a busy day, and dinnertime came and we were tired and hot, and picked up sushi at the supermarket.  But the rest of the week we did.  No one had the same thing any two nights.  We had green beans and salad and lots of gazpacho. We stuck to the plan, although we swapped a couple of the nights. 

To make the menu we made a calendar for the week, and everyone wrote on post-it notes what they wanted when.  With the post-its, things could get rearranged as made sense.  With the week’s schedule in mind, I bought groceries for several days at a time.  Like so many things, it makes complete and total sense, but takes time and planning by everyone.  I think we will continue it into fall as all of us will be even busier, and less able to commit to making a sensible dinner plan for everyone at 5pm each weeknight. 

I had hoped to make a fitness goal as well, but over the course of the past week, the vague pain I had in my ankle has turned into really painful Achilles tendonitis.  We’re off travelling for the next two weeks, and I’m just hoping it will get better on its own with only moderate use, but I’ll see when we get back.
What are the implications for teaching health?  I think the food journal is a huge tool for teaching nutrition  as well as science and math.  With my own daughter the subject of what she eats is a loaded one, and it would be fantastic if she had a school project to keep a food journal for a couple and then  analyse the nutritional content, all in the spirit of a school science project (instead of mom nagging).  The record keeping is an example of scientific record keeping, and the analysis uses both math and science. 
My daughter's school did urge, but not require, kids to keep an exercise journal for PE.  Kids who turned one in each month got an extra hour of recess one day.  I know it appealed to some, but my daughter never did one.  I think it could work as part of a class goal of paying "taking care of ourselves" during a unit on health and nutrition.  The PE program might have been too anonymous.
My daughter's school also had a "marathon" each May, where kids did laps around the field each day until they had accumulated 26.2 miles worth.  A bunch of teachers also participated, and the kids loved it.  There was a lot of school excitement about the marathon, and the teachers' participation certainly contributed to that.

A few more great microteachings today.  I liked the conversational style that people used today.  Also saw the feedback from my group's teaching last week.  A few people said they had trouble hearing me.  I felt I was trying to project at the time, and I wonder how you speak louder.  There comes a point where, because it feels like I'm shouting, I switch over from conversational mode to short instructions.  Another thing to think on and practice...

We also talked about the Spirit Catches Me.  I read it it on my kindle, which I find an easy way to read, but a hard to way to call specifics back up...

It was pretty cool to hold a human brain today.  My dad taught at a medical school all of his working life.  His subjects were gross anatomy and neuro anatomy, but never once did any of us kids go in with him on a working day, so I had never seen a brain before.  When my sister was in college, he arranged a summer job for her where she helped write brochures encouraging people to plan to donate their bodies to the medical program after they died.  He also used to come home on dissection days and head straight to the shower to wash away the formaldehyde smell....  so today reminded me a bit of his teaching days...

Talked tonight a bit  with my husband about how to praise the learning vs the accomplishment - something we struggle with as parents. I think it is tricky to do well -- when praise is very specific, e.g. "What a graceful tail you've put in your letter 'a'", I think   the praise-receiver can hear "the rest looks lousy."  Something I'll keep thinking about...

my 1st microteaching...

Cohort18 rocks!  Shannon and I presented the bike lesson we worked on with Navreet today to a fantastically supportive 6th grade class.  I believe my hand shaking while speaking to the class has greatly minimized in the last month, though I see from the first minutes of the video of the lesson that I also make some mighty big, emphatic hand gestures. 

I know that at home I tend to lecture ... I tell my daughter lots of things when it would probably be better for us to discuss.  Shannon & Navreet let me have the more conversational part of the lesson, and I wanted to work at having the class discuss, rather than me lecture.  I was also determined to venture into the center aisle of the room while talking.  I've watched some people come to the very 1st class comfortable doing that, and others start to do it, but I hadn't yet ventured there.  I did a bit of both, and the world kept on turning, so maybe I can do them both again :-).

1st microteaching day

Today's micro-lesson teachers did a great job!  It makes me appreciate anew the group, time and space  management skills that teachers have:  to listen to each kid, redirect or correct as necessary, encourage emerging ideas, keep the conversation on track and headed towards the goal, all while walking around the room, passing things out and picking things up, watching the clock and mentally re-adjusting the plans for the day as lessons take shorter or longer than expected, etc, etc. Wow.

Also liked the group opening exercise of looking at grid of 16 squares (4x4) and counting how many squares there are.  It was a simple and effective example of how you can come to different answers after time and conversation than you come up with at first glance.