Dumb Smart

I learned a new slang term today, a replacement I suppose for "mad," as in "mad hot ballroom" and all that. The new (probably already outdated) term is "dumb" and I wish I could remember exactly what the expression was, but I was just too taken aback by the realization that I had just heard something for the first time.

Anyway, later that day someone was remarking on some cool feature of the smartboard I was using and I couldn't resist noting that yes, I guess you could say it was "dumb smart." (Groans all around.)

We've finally got most of the computer issues resolved, and I've been using a lot of PowerPoint recently, trudging through the chemistry that the LE curriculum assumes students know (thus no time is budgeted for actually teaching these concepts) but of course the majority of them are clueless. It seems to me that there is a tremendous leap from what students are expected to know in middle school (or at least what they can reasonably be expected to learn) and what they are assumed to know (or need to know) for the LE curriculum. I just don't know how we can get very far with cellular processes, genetics, homeostasis, or cycling of matter without some basic understanding of chemistry. So I've been killing them with the chemistry content these last couple of weeks with lectures, asking them to understand as much as they can and just memorize the rest, because we will return to the concepts over and over in the context of the above mentioned topics. And I left a lot of things that I do think I can teach better in context - like acids & bases, enzyme action, etc. I may be wasting my time and theirs, but I don't know any other options here for teaching covering these largely middle school topics like atoms, elements, compounds, mixtures, solutions, etc. - basic chemistry in just one week!

Which brings me back to the smartboard, the main purpose of which seems to be delivering lectures. Makes sense, I guess. I find it useful for elaborating on a slide, answering questions by drawing a little diagram or picture or adding an aside or throwing in an "enrichment" vocabulary word that I hadn't thought of when making the slides. It's also useful for helping kids learn to take notes, simplify drawings, etc. I'm thinking of incorporating more note-taking skills in these presentations, since kids usually just copy word for word or letter for letter what's on the slide, without processing. I want to try showing a slide just long enough for students to read, then moving on to a blank slide, and then asking volunteers to come up and write how they would summarize the material on the smartboard. Again, I would prefer not to lecture so much, but sometimes you just have to plough through some material to get to something more interesting or just to make it through all the stuff that's in the LE curriculum. I only have 6 periods per week this year - last year I had trouble getting through the material with 8 periods. So I want to make the most of it when I do use it, and get students to take notes both more efficiently and more effectively.