One of the students in first period said that she wished she was a boy, because then life would be so much easier. Her friend and I shared this look ("What is she talking about?"), and her friend told me that that doesn't make any sense. I wonder what goes on in a sixth grader girl's head to make her think that there are advantages to being a boy. I think that the boys generally react more positively to class discussions on bodily functions and blood, now that the classes are in the human systems unit; some of the girls may have already been influenced, in general, to not like blood and gore (or at least, on some subconscious level, to act like they don't like that kind of stuff).
Another thing that I thought was interesting was that students were really honest when the teacher asked them who had finished their power plant model, who had started, and who had not started at all. In a really short amount of time, these students are going to grow up enough where they will not answer those kinds of questions honestly. Consequently, it might be easier to get a spot-check on younger students' progress, before they become too embarrassed to admit when they aren't on task. Also, for those students who are completely done with their project (or who have even submitted their models early), they might not get things done so early in a few years; this might be a golden age of students not procrastinating when they are at least semi-interested in the material.
Finally, I thought the lecture on the digestive system was really interesting, with the teacher using metaphors, a single diagram of the GI tract, and a lot of simple This-is-What-That-Does explanations. It was really interesting to hear the basic gist of what each organ does, without the terminology. At the same point, the students are still learning some academic language (glucose, amylase) which will help them to talk about the material. I noticed that there was some differentiation going on, with the more advanced classes getting hit with more terminology and detailed explanations of the systems.
In Earth Science at the high school, as always, I loved the tie-ins to current events. A few of the students were really engaged with the video on that stowaway-to-Hawaii kid, their conversation showed that some of them were questioning the claim that the boy really had his heart rate go below 20 bpm (they are actually evaluating the information put in front of them), and a lot of students will remember that the stratosphere is COLD (which fit in perfectly with the lesson).
I thought it was really neat that the students had to use atmosphere flashcards to put in order of altitude that only had pictures, not words (e.g., a picture of a thermometer standing in for thermosphere). There are at least a couple of students with diverse needs, and it was a great way to get them fully involved with their table mates; I saw a LOT of interaction, even from the student who talks the least in class. At the same time, all the other students still needed to make the connection that the troposphere card should go below the stratosphere card.
Also, I really liked the Google doc assignment the students spent most of the period working on, asking questions that were either review, retrievable from the websites the students were supposed to restrict themselves to, and higher-level thinking questions about why the information is organized the way it is (Why are the atmospheric layers divided up? What is the system for dividing them?). Not all students were always on task, but the assignment allowed for a lot of interaction, and I like that the students are just normal with me and talk about the material in kind of a no-nonsense way--there isn't an authoritarian vibe in the classroom, similar to the middle school science classroom.
Another thing that I thought was really interesting that I am also going to bring up in my social inequality class (we are studying heretonormativity and masculinity in the high schools; I've been looking for GLBT/queer issues everywhere all week) is that it was somehow dress-up day at the high school. What this meant was that a few of the boys were in jeans instead of sweats, but that the girls were wearing what looked like Maurice or the fancier line brand of Target dresses, with matching shoes. Clearly, boys look for functionality in their clothing; it is not part of how they do gender to wear non-functional clothing, in contrast to the girls. Also, I have also been socialized to notice clothing and to put value in clothing (in terms of literally liking dresses myself and also having an idea of what brand they were and how much they cost), as part of the way I do gender. In another context, I would compliment my friends for putting together some of the same outfits or finding the fancier Target binders, even though that means that my friends would have been spending more money and being less comfortable than they could have been.
In terms of my students, I am getting that sad-end-of-the-semester feel. These students were especially motivated, engaged, and well-prepared; they came in with a lot of biology and nursing already (coursework and from their professional careers). I am sad 99% of the time when it is the end of the semester, and of course, I am extra sad when the students are able to go that extra mile. Our metabolism discussion took an interesting turn; we finished up beta-oxidation and lipogenesis, and we starting talking critically about fad diets and what's advertised as being healthy these days. I really like that they made the connections between diets they had tried (and that they felt safe enough for telling on themselves) and applied what we learned in class (No! Don't make extra ketone bodies on purpose! Eat carbs!). That might be a good test question next time I teach this class (give them a description of an actual diet and have them evaluate it in terms of the metabolic pathways we covered in terms of its effect on weight loss AND health)....
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