burdorfedublog.blogspot.com
Burdorf's Edu Blog: My first attempt
http://burdorfedublog.blogspot.com/2011/01/my-first-attempt.html
As an aspiring education administrator and current teacher, this blog will be designed to pass on content related to education. I will be posting educational materials but also be posting my own thoughts on where eduction is and where I would like to see it go. Tuesday, January 18, 2011. Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom). 7th/8th Social Studies Teacher, Aspiring Administrator. View my complete profile. Happy 10th birthday, Dangerously Irrelevant! Tough Path Ahead for Colorado on ESSA. Why are we alive?
burdorfedublog.blogspot.com
Burdorf's Edu Blog: Standands-Based Grading
http://burdorfedublog.blogspot.com/2011/02/standands-based-grading.html
As an aspiring education administrator and current teacher, this blog will be designed to pass on content related to education. I will be posting educational materials but also be posting my own thoughts on where eduction is and where I would like to see it go. Tuesday, February 8, 2011. The story yesterday in the Des Moines Register. A good resource for this discussion comes from a blog I follow MeTA musings. Matt uses his background in the subject area to explain this much more clear than I probably ca...
concretekax.blogspot.com
Concrete Classroom: November 2012
http://concretekax.blogspot.com/2012_11_01_archive.html
Sunday, November 25, 2012. I have been thinking about food alot lately. You could blame it on Thanksgiving but it has been on my mind for much longer. We started a family garden a couple of years ago and that started a shift toward paying more attention to what we eat. Right now I am reading Fast Food Nation. On his blog (to summarize them both, every living thing depends on the death of other living things to survive). By Joy Harjo which says better than I how much of life revolves around food. I have s...
concretekax.blogspot.com
Concrete Classroom: December 2012
http://concretekax.blogspot.com/2012_12_01_archive.html
Saturday, December 8, 2012. How to win a war. Last week I lost a war. This week I was determined to do better. The first thing I did this weekend was to actually complete the Venn Diagram assignment myself. I realized many weaknesses of it including poor design and poor choice of texts. I should have created structure before. The assignment to help them understand the texts before asking them to compare them. The Library of Congress also did not really address the topics in the way that I wanted. I have ...
concretekax.blogspot.com
Concrete Classroom: "What are you willing to get fired for"?
http://concretekax.blogspot.com/2013/01/what-are-you-willing-to-get-fired-for.html
Monday, January 28, 2013. What are you willing to get fired for"? My favorite session at Educon was session 5. You won't find this title in program, but this is a snapshot of a great conversation that I had with Rob Grecko. He asked me: "What are you willing to get fired for? Poor test scores vs. refusing to teach scripted curriculum? We all make compromises and do things that we may philosophically disagree with at times to work in a system called a school, district, or whatever. When is enough, enough?
concretekax.blogspot.com
Concrete Classroom: April 2012
http://concretekax.blogspot.com/2012_04_01_archive.html
Thursday, April 26, 2012. Should I care if students like me? I usually agree with Seth Godin but I think the tone of his post. About Applause is wrong for education (I realize that he is talking about marketing). Particularly this quote:. Who decides if your work is good? When you are at your best, you do.". Some teachers even brag about students being disciplined or "put in their place.". So should teachers care if students "like" them? All of the content they taught you or how they made you feel? So I ...
concretekax.blogspot.com
Concrete Classroom: October 2012
http://concretekax.blogspot.com/2012_10_01_archive.html
Monday, October 29, 2012. This is a blatant self-promotion post. The local news did a nice story about the #MyParty12 election project which you can see here. Side question: Why do I feel uncomfortable promoting what we are doing? Why don't teachers share more the good things happening in their classrooms? How can we change the education conversation in this country without sharing what we are doing? Links to this post. Sunday, October 21, 2012. Which one is your favorite? Links to this post. Teachers ar...
concretekax.blogspot.com
Concrete Classroom: January 2013
http://concretekax.blogspot.com/2013_01_01_archive.html
Monday, January 28, 2013. What are you willing to get fired for"? My favorite session at Educon was session 5. You won't find this title in program, but this is a snapshot of a great conversation that I had with Rob Grecko. He asked me: "What are you willing to get fired for? Poor test scores vs. refusing to teach scripted curriculum? We all make compromises and do things that we may philosophically disagree with at times to work in a system called a school, district, or whatever. When is enough, enough?
itaughtmydogtowhistle.blogspot.com
I Taught My Dog to Whistle: Origami Frog Natural Selection
http://itaughtmydogtowhistle.blogspot.com/2013/12/origami-frog-natural-selection.html
I Taught My Dog to Whistle. Focusing on assessment and standards based grading in a middle school science classroom.with some dog training on the side. Thursday, December 19, 2013. Origami Frog Natural Selection. Just a neat activity to share:. We are working on genetics, and just took that the next step to see how genetics would change as the process of natural selection was happening to a population. To do this, students made origami frogs as seen in this video:. Https:/ www.youtube.com/watch? Learning...
concretekax.blogspot.com
Concrete Classroom: November 2011
http://concretekax.blogspot.com/2011_11_01_archive.html
Monday, November 21, 2011. I don't know either". Today I think we had a breakthrough in one of my classes. We are about a week into our PBL unit on genocide. I changed up the driving question from "Why do people hate? To "Why do people tolerate hate? I really want students to focus on the lack of action by the world to stop genocide in the last century and move them to DO SOMETHING about it. One of my students spoke up and said that the problem was not with the research but that they did not know what th...
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