It has been a few days since my last post but I have been really busy with school, finishing out the end of the term!  My parents are currently on the flight to Sydney and will be traveling for the next few hours!  I'm extremely excited to see them on Friday when they arrive in Bairnsdale.

Yesterday was a busy day with two dissections in the last two classes of the day.  They year-7s were busy during their class dissecting squid and the "Animal Inside" group were dissecting mice!  I would much have preferred the mice the entire day; they didn't smell as bad as the squid and they certainly weren't as messy.  I had ink all over myself at the end of the lesson with the youngins.  Calamari certainly didn't sound great for dinner; good thing we had steak instead!

The "Animal Inside" crew really enjoyed the mice, well, at least most of them did.  A few of the students had to leave the room because they couldn't handle the dissection.  They spend the lesson on the computers doing some research on a task I gave them as an alternative to the dissection.  The rest of the students, working on the mice, did a fantastic job!  I was really impressed with their keenness to preform the task.  I dissected a rat, along with the students, to help them with the procedure.  Before making any cuts in the mice, I gave the students a demo of how to preform each of the necessary cuts.  I probably should have worn gloves looking back; my hands still smell of feral animal.

Today, the students in "Bones" finished up their projects on the computer.  Unfortunately, a few of them were having computer issues and weren't able to finish on time.  At least they have the next two weeks until they see me next in class, so they have plenty of time to complete the assignment.  Students were told that they could make any additions to their site over break if they wanted to make them look better.  If you would like to see some of their progress, you can go to www.bscbones.weebly.com

One of the students put together the home page today after he finished his project.  He put together all of the hyperlinks to the rest of the students' sites; I was quite impressed!  

I arrived home today and started the laundry so I have fresh clothes when I leave for Melbourne on Sunday with my parents.  I also submitted my project to Miami; I'm so relieved that it's done! 

Tomorrow I only have one class and then will be swamped with grading and then parent-teacher conferences after school until 8 or so.  I'm excited to meet students' parents but am a little nervous since they are my first ones.  I'm sure they'll go well and there will be a lot to take from the experience!

One observation down, one to go!

Another day of beautiful weather and sun in East Gippsland!  Well, at least until it started raining for an hour or so in the late afternoon, but who’s keeping track?  I have almost come to expect rain when the mornings are like the one that I had today – sunny and warm.

Today was the big day!  Rod came to BSC to observe my lesson today for my period two “Bones” class.  During the observation, the students were working on their final project.  I introduced the final project earlier this week, and the students seem to really enjoy working on it so far!  I’m glad their optimism carried over into today’s day of work.

Basically, the students in “Bones” are to build a website using weebly.com to show their understanding of a particular bone that was assigned to them.  On Monday, I went around the room with 25 bone names in my hat and asked each student to pick a name.  I thought it was the fairest thing to do!  The students were given a tutorial on Monday on how to use the Weebly editor to build their website.  Since I am very familiar with Weebly (I use it just about everyday to write in my blogs), I was able to help the students with some of the basics.

Today, I really wanted the students to work on their projects, using all the time to their advantage to complete as much as they could.  I also wanted to go over paraphrasing with them and how to put someone else’s information into their own words.  The students did really well with the small activity that I had planned to gauge their understanding of how to turn research into their own work.  The students were really engaged on the netbooks and were extremely eager to find out more, not only about their bones, but also how to use Weebly technology to create the best site possibly; I need to come up with more projects like this one!  The sites are starting to come together and are really turning out well!

Eventually, when students start finishing up their sites, I will have them working together to build the main site that will link all of the sites together so there is a main interface that allows the students to see everyone else’s work.  I am also looking into having the students use links in their own web pages to other students’ sites, especially if there is a connection between the bones or another student’s bone is mentioned.  I am pumped to see the final products!

After period two, I met with Rod, Linda, and Pam to go over a few things, and then made my way to year 11 biology class.  Unfortunately, the students had an assembly today and were not going to be in class for too long.  I have such a great time teaching that group of students!  The assembly, in the main gym, was devoted to giving awards to the many leaders in the school who have showed leadership not only in the school, but also in the community.  The East Gippland representative in the Victorian Parliament, Tim Bull, was even there to give awards to students; I was very impressed with the whole assemblage!

After arriving home today on the bike, I hopped on the computer and skyped with Mary Kate, who was diligently studying for an exam that she has tomorrow; I wasn’t too surprised that she was up late making sure she had covered every last detail.  Best of luck to her!

I’m really hoping tomorrow brings good weather and no rain!  I was pretty sad that I wasn’t able to ride the bike today after coming home due to the rain, so I’ll just have to make up for it in the coming days!

How is it that time is passing so quickly?  It seems like just a few hours ago that I was leaving school on Friday to start the weekend...where in the world did it go?  I had a great weekend in town catching up on some sleep and some relaxing, it was nice for a change!

On Friday night, after a long day at school, I stuck around the house working on a bit of my project and catching up on the news on the Internet.  I was exhausted and didn't feel like doing much so I went to bed to catch up on some sleep. 

On Saturday, Domenic and Sheryl took me to Stratford, around 45 minutes west of Bairnsdale, on the river...you guessed it...Avon, of course.  I was really keen to go to the Turkish store in town along the main road.  Having lived in Turkey for a few years of my adolescence, I was really interested to see what they had.  I was only disappointed with the prices, which seemed to be marked up around 200%.  They had everything that you would expect to find in a store in the Grande Bazaar in downtown Istanbul.  Rather than being rolled up like they normally are, the carpets were hanging from carpet racks that moved like pages in a book.  The lady was surprised when I greeted her with "Merhaba" and "Teșekkürler" when I left.  She probably doesn’t get that a lot!

After coming home from Stratford, I helped out with some yard work and decided to mow the lawn.  After a couple weeks of sun and rain, the lawn really needed it.  I'm sure at the end of the week, it will seem like weeks since cutting it; it really grows fast here!  After finishing, Domenic took me to the supermarket to pick up a few things for that night.

The plan was to go to Pam's house, in Nicholson, with a few other teachers for some drinks and games.  I was invited to stay the night.  She just got a new kelpie puppy a few months ago; she looked just like Red Dog from the movie Red Dog. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it!  The evening went well and I ended up on the winning Pictionary team.  It’s a good thing I’m not an art teacher though!

I was really excited for a bike ride on Sunday so as soon as I got home from Pam’s, I hopped on the bike and headed back to Nicholson.  I got about 75% of the way and headed home.  I passed the Wy Yung oval and saw that there was a cricket match going on, so I stopped to watch the end of it.  I had absolutely no idea who was winning and how far into the match it was until a few wickets later when the ball was tossed up in the air and the team on the field started celebrating.  I turned around to get back on the bike and there was the scoreboard…definitely a “duh” moment, especially since I was looking for it the whole time!

I was back to school today, and had only one class to teach.  I spent the morning planning for the coming lessons.  When fourth bell came around, I headed over to the science center.  The student in “Bones” class started working on their final project.  I came up with a project that I could take back home with me to show future employers, except, I didn’t want to carry it back.  So, the students are working with weebly.com to construct a website.  Their website will focus on a specific bone that they chose today.  After a quick tutorial, the students went on their way to start the construction.  I am really excited to see the final products!  Whilst the students are working on their sites, I will be working on a site that will provide links to each of the students’ sites. 

It has been a while since I last wrote and this post is quite short, compared to the post I made after last weekend, but things are starting to get really busy as the term is coming to a close.  I will make an effort to keep up to date this week and have something every day.

A great day today in Victoria and another to look forward to tomorrow!  I really wanted to ride the bike into school today but unfortunately the weather took a turn today and it rained most of the morning here.  Not surprisingly the rain made the rest of the day quite muggy and the added heat made it somewhat uncomfortable in class, but I managed to have a very successful day in the classroom!

The day started with the usual Friday morning meeting with the entire staff.  Again, there was nothing major to report about.  After the meeting, I had to book it over to the science center for period one.  It was “Bones,” and it was the first time that I had the class for myself! 

My cooperating teacher wasn’t there today so another teacher took her place and sat in the back.  The way it works at BSC, is when a teacher is not present at school, another teacher, who has a free period, is given materials to use for the lesson.  I think it is a great system, and keeps the school from having full time substitutes.  Many of the subs in the U.S. whom I have come across have been somewhat inexperienced and usually lack in classroom management skills.  Thankfully with this system at BSC, all the teachers are expected to take an “extra” once every 3 weeks, and know the students who they are going to be teaching; this makes classroom management much easier.

Back to “Bones.”  I started the lesson with a Smart Board presentation that asked the students to come to the board to label the human skeleton.  The students didn’t miss a one.  I then had a couple slides that asked the students to label the bones in a couple x-rays and then asked them if there was anything wrong with them.  A couple of the x-rays were perfectly normal and a couple had obviously something wrong.  I showed them what a broken clavicle looked like and what a broken ankle might look like.  They were really receptive to the x-rays and thought that was an interesting task.

I then moved onto introducing skeletal muscles.  After a couple slides asking students to think about what skeleton muscles look like and how they work, I asked the class what they wanted to know about them.  After a few students aid what they wanted to learn about, I handed out a work sheet that I created asking the students to use a table of Greek and Latin terms to determine what a few muscle names meant.  It then asked them to determine why the muscles were named the way that they were.  The worksheet concluded by asking the students to use various sources to answer a few though provoking questions.  Many of the questions were very similar to questions that students had asked earlier in the lesson.  This made me happy.

I received great feedback from the extra teacher in the class who was taking notes on my lesson.  It was nice to have yet another teacher give me feedback on my teaching style.

My next class was “Animal Inside.”  I gave the students some more time to finish an assignment that I assigned the prior lesson.  After, I had them work on an activity that asked the students to compare the teeth and jaw structure of different mammals.  Some of the students had no problem completing the activity.  Some of the students in this class refuse to pick up a pen to do any work unless you’re looking over their shoulder.  I don’t tolerate this and express to them that it is unacceptable to do nothing in class.  It really is a shame to see young adults not value their education.  Sometimes I want to call them out and tell them how lucky they are to have such a nice school with caring teachers.  They are also so lucky to have a science center like the one at BSC with more than enough resources for teachers to develop brilliant lessons.  It is in these students’ lives that I wish to make the most difference.

Since the year 7s were still at camp, my third period was free so I could plan for the practical during period 4 with my year 11s.  I spent most of the time refining my practical worksheet that I was going to give to the students to complete.  

The point of the practical was to get the students to use the microscope to view various samples.  I also wanted them to use this opportunity to make scientific drawings.  The students were given three specimens to look at: onion, banana, and elodea, a freshwater plant.   This would also allow them to see different kinds of cells.  Truly the only hazard was the stains that we used, Methylene blue was used to stain the onions and iodine was used for the bananas.  Methylene blue outlines the cell walls of the onion cells and iodine is used to stain bananas because it stains the starch of banana cells a deep purple.  The elodea didn’t need to be stained because the cells were of course green and didn’t need any more definition.  We also had some blue-green algae out to be used as an extension to the practical.  The algae were collected on my trip to Lakes Entrance with my cooperating teacher.  All in all the practical went well but I will need to use the next class lesson to finish up the practical. 

After a beer and some work after school, I left to go home.  I hopped on the bike and went for my daily ride around the neighborhood and down to the river.  I was ready for the weekend because my ride wasn’t very long, I felt a little bit lazy.

Tomorrow, I’m planning to take a trip up the coast past Lakes Entrance to Cape Conran to go fishing with my cooperating teacher.  I was so happy that she invited me to come along!  I’m hoping to catch some dinner!  I will take some pictures and post them tomorrow when I get home.

I’m currently watching preseason Australian football.  The Australian Football League (AFL) started today so I suspect the next few weeks are going to exciting around the house.  I’ve been told to support (again, not root for) Carlton Football Club of Melbourne since they are the “best team” in the AFL.  I can’t really argue with my host family.  In all seriousness, I think its best to keep an open mind to see which team that I like but from what I’ve seen and read about Carlton, I think they are pretty solid.

I will back to write tomorrow to talk about my trip fishing; hopefully it is successful!  

Well its getting toward the end of the day, and I'm about to head out to the year 7 camp just outside of town for the night.  Today has been great.  It seems like as I progress through this placement, the days keep getting shorter and shorter.  Time is definitely flying here in Australia!

I will be taking over "Bones" on Friday, so today, I observed the class complete their bone dissection lab.  Pretty basic.  I am going to start the students off on skeletal muscle and its role in bone movement.

The year 11 biology class went well.  My cooperating teacher took half of the class period to go over a long term project that we are expecting the students to complete in a few weeks.  I then took over and went over the basic features and care for light microscopes.  We will be using them during the lesson on Friday, I'm excited! 

I have the last period of the day off to write quickly in my blog and finalize my lesson for tomorrow's "Animal Inside" class.  I will be back to write sometime tomorrow night!

Internet is finally back!  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to post the last two until this morning when I arrived at school. 

I am writing this post, reflecting on my day while watching the Super Bowl, which is being re-run on ESPN here is Australia.  So far, we're not getting any of the excitng commercials.  I have been told that the Doritos and Honda commercials were the best of the lot.  I don’t expect to watch the full game because I already know who wins.  What a surprise to find that the Giants won; I would have never thought that they were going to come out of the season with any more than a winning record.  Tom Brady seemed unbeatable in the post-season.  Is it too early to start supporting* the Bengals in the Super Bowl next season? WHO DEY!

*I’m not allowed to say “root” here because in Australian, it is another term for coitus.  I think Australians might find "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during a 7th inning stretch comical!

Today started off in the faculty lounge where I had to figure out my new sign-in information for the school network.  I was given a netbook to use while working at school because my computer isn’t authorized to be hooked up to the school wireless system.  Oh well, at least I have a memory stick to use to transfer any files back and forth. 

After posting my blog entries and catching up on a few emails, I started working on a few lesson plans for “Animal Inside” regarding the digestive system.  So far, I’ve planned out about a weeks worth of lessons.  The key is to keep students engaged with the material. 

Before lunch, I wanted to get through a few chapters in the year 11 biology books to make sure that I was up to date on my content.  I am in no ways indicating that the focus of this class is the textbooks; rather, I am using them as tools to organize my lessons in a logical way.  The Cell Theory seems like a logical place to start right after the Scientific Method and the importance of observation.

Lunch was quick and I used much of the time to put together a short presentation on the Smart Board software for my “Animal Inside” class tomorrow.

Fourth period came around and I headed over to the science center to meet the “Bones” class.  A few of the students were asking about the Super Bowl game.  I had no idea; I tried to keep it off my mind today since it started around 11 am and finished around 2 in the afternoon; I didn't want to waste my time with the "East Coast Affair."  I could only tell them that I had predicted the Pats to win.  A couple of the males in the class asked me which team I supported.  Careful not to say “root,” I told them that I supported the Bengals.  “Who are they?” asked one of the students.  “Just an above par team who can’t seem to win post-season games,” I replied.  I also told them that they were the team from my home city.

Class started and the students organized into groups to work on matching different bone names to their corresponding pictures.  It was another day of memorizing…yippee (sarcasm)!  Memorization doesn't allow students in a science classroom to make much meaning of anything.  I really want to engage these students more in future lessons.  By the time the class ended, I could tell that the students were itching to leave because they were getting bored with going over term after term. 

I am struggling to come up with how I want to organize the lessons of this class.  Although the class is called “Bones,” I would reason that the students would need to know about skeletal muscle to truly understand how the bones move in the body, as well as the different levers that we use for various activities such as movement and lifting.  I’m sure more will come later regarding the direction of the lessons for this class.

After a science meeting directly following school, I came home, changed, and hopped on the bike to go for a ride around the neighborhood.  It was a beautiful day in the low 20s.  In fact it’s supposed to be similar weather for the rest of the week!  Another perk in East Gippsland...

The first day went really well.  It started at my desk in the morning, waiting for the entire faculty meeting at 9:30.  I felt very welcomed with all of the teachers and faculty coming my desk to meet me; most were interested in the "gridiron" when they talked to me.  I don't know many people referring to football as that, but when you have soccer and Aussie Rules in Australia, the "gridiron" is a good distinctive term.  I was pleased to find another "yank" at the school.  He has been a teacher at BSC since the seventies and told me that he just never left whenever he arrived down under.  From my experiences thus far, I can understand why.

I sat in the back at the faculty meeting which took place in the junior campus library.  I was quite surprised when they introduced me in front of the entire faculty.  Yea, I was that American in the back.  After a long meeting about new policy and the formal introduction of the new principle, I was taken around the campus by one of the science teachers.  

He was incredibly helpful, and showed me the ins and outs of the college before taking me to the science center.  There, I was given a brief introduction to the Smartboards and some of the other technology.  After some helpful tips, he allowed me to mess around for a bit to get a feel for how to use the interactive white boards, which are such an important asset for every classroom of the 21st century.  I'm glad that I'll have some fluidity when I use them in front of the students.

Lunch was served soon after in the junior campus teachers lounge, consisting of meat pies, sandwiches, and a lot of gluten free options.  That is one thing that I've noticed, many gluten-free options.  Many of the restaurants that I've been to here have had a separate menu for people on a gluten-free diet.  I'm still unsure if it is due to an increased prevalence of celiac disease or wheat allergies in Australia.  There may be other reasons too.  You really don't see much of this accommodation in America.

After lunch, it was more meetings for the faculty, including a union meeting and a tutorial for the new computer system.  I only attended the tutorial of course, although it would have been interesting to sit in on the other.  I then met with my coordinating teacher and went over the schedule for the next few months and talked a strategy for the classes that I would be teaching.

I am currently going to be teaching a grade 11 biology class, a class called "bones", and another called "the animal inside."  I will be teaching students from grades 7-11 which will allow me to have a great experience with both middle school and high school students.

I arrived home after school a little after 5 and had a nice steak dinner with potatoes, mixed greens and purple carrots, which turned much of the dinner purple as well.  Seemed like an unusual vegetable.  Dinner finished and I decided to go on a ride on the "push bike" up the street and back to clear my mind prior to writing in my blog and a few emails before bed.  

I'm currently watching a 20/20 cricket match between India and Australia.  Since I know the rules now, I will spare you a few pages and just say that Australia is doing well!  Australians love their sport!  This is a great way to wind down the day and kick the feet up!  How 'bout a Victoria Bitter to go