"The first blizzard of 2006 is only inches away from breaking the record. The city received at least 24 inches of snow, making it the second biggest snow storm in city history."
The good news is that it happened on a weekend with lots of warning, so the city hopes to be up and running by Monday morning. Still, should make for an interesting school day, or week even. I'm scheduled to visit (observe) a fellow living environment teacher at another school on Tuesday. I hope that doesn't get postponed or cancelled- these things don't just happen and my AP has been working on the arrangements for a few weeks now.
As far as teaching goes, we are into the human body systems, working our way toward reproduction and genetics in a couple of weeks. As a review of several concepts, I have the students working on one of those hokey assignments that I usually avoid, but decided to give it a go for this unit. They are writing an "autobiography" of a carbon atom beginning in the atmosphere as part of a CO2 molecule then cycling through plants and animals and back to the atmosphere. Along the way they will have to discuss plant structure & photosynthesis, animal digestion, circulation, cellular respiration, and excretion. Not to mention the implicit review of biochem concepts including chemical bonds and enzymes.
I had this feeling that students simply weren't getting the whole carbon cycle concept - in fact, making sense of a lot of the abstract ideas in biology is a stretch for a lot of my 8th and 9th graders. And honestly, I try to keep it at a level necessary for the regents. I do not feel compelled to turn regents LE into AP Bio. Of course, it's not always easy to read the tea leaves and figure out exactly how much is enough for the regents exam. I'm hoping this will help a little. If I get a chance I'll post a fuller description and a rubric sometime this week.
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