Bond with James: A Week in the Life of a Teacher (Week 7): Labs, Quizzes, and Subs!

Sunday, October 8, 2017

A Week in the Life of a Teacher (Week 7): Labs, Quizzes, and Subs!

The vlog highlights a 3-day window of the seventh week of school during the 2017-2018 school year. I show clips of students participating in a density lab, taking a quiz, and me talking about preparing for a substitute.

This week marked the beginning of a new six-weeks grading period - the 2nd six-weeks. I started off the week making new hall ticket passes for all of my classes. You can check out my hall ticket video here (I talk about what they are and my motive for doing them). 

On Monday, my A-Day classes participated in the density cylinder lab. My B-Day classes did this on Friday. Each group of 4 received a tube containing four pieces of a particular substance.  However, they worked in pairs, and each pair took two of the pieces to determine the densities.  After, the pairs switched pieces so that all students at a particular table had the opportunity to establish the densities of all four pieces.  The purpose of the lab was to help students observe that the density of an object is an intensive physical property (the size/shape of the object doesn't matter). 

On Tuesday and Wednesday, my students took an online quiz over density.  I had created several videos of myself teaching the various density calculations and had given students over a week to watch the videos.  Unfortunately, this did not go over well because I had a large number of students that had not watched the videos and it showed during the quiz.  However, with all of my quizzes, I do allow retakes if students come in for tutoring.  

After the quiz, I began teaching students how to read chemical formulas, and I also started an introduction to balancing chemical equations.  I figured I could introduce a topic and leave something general over these concepts with the substitutes on Thursday and Friday. I did not make the sub assignment too tricky, but I did leave something that would challenge them while I was out. 


Planning for a sub is a pain; at least for me! I ended up leaving late because I had to put up equipment and prep the sub work for my students.  I still hadn't even packed for my trip to New York, and I had a flight at 5 a.m. the next morning! Although, in retrospect, I should have planned a little earlier and thought I could quickly do everything at the last minute. I was wrong.






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