Things are still going relatively smoothly, knock on wood. I wrote and then deleted a long list of kids who are either disruptive or not learning, but that's an awfully negative way to start this post. Suffice to say that I have a lot of kids with a lot of challenges.
But on the brighter side, we started doing calculations with F=ma on Friday and a lot of kids think it's easy, including some who have really low math skills. We did a semi-successful lab on friction last week too (although I haven't graded them yet... hopefully the work is good enough for me to give some high scores so their grades go up because the grades are pretty dismal right now due to the disaster of the Barbie doll bungee jumping lab... and I need to figure out how to grade notebooks more efficiently). Kids are making connections to what they have studied in science in previous years at a rate far higher than I remember from last year. Connections to math too.
I am really happy with the decision to start the year with the forces unit. It's fairly light on math and mostly intuitive. I had intended to wrap up the unit at the end of this week but it's going to go on for another whole week now. Which eats into the energy unit, but I think we'll be able to pick up the pace and get through it. I hope.
So, things look OK at the moment. The real challenge of teaching, though, is that you never really know what to expect. Anything could happen at pretty much any time.
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