Week 2 Post Practicum Brain Spewing

Same block different day.  Full period this time and I got to see the power/utility of the block scheduling   It was interesting to note the use of time.  I found it interesting that he chose to give some students (one third of the class) the laboratory activity seemingly random (middle two rows).  It was then up to those kids to go find two partners.  They had done a similar activity since I had last seen them.  They are now on a new unit of optics/waves.  They were working with concave and convex mirrors, tracing lines and seeing how they reflected off.  This took approximately 20 minutes or so.  I was able to talk with each of about half of the kids and started asking them how they liked this activity and what they learned more.  Most seemed to say that they would love doing things like this all day.  One said she could learn it no matter what.  

Getting to this weeks burning questions, my cooperating teacher has pretty much total freedom to go with whatever he wants when he wants to teach it.  He is the only teacher in the school for this particular grade and class.  That said, I did learn the previous week that he has it grouped into several 3-6 week units.  Most of March will be waves/light with some optics.  April through the end of the year will be things related to chemistry.  Each week has a specific focus.  He has been doing this for several years.  He started with the text book, and expanded out eventually leaving it behind so the text books are now all on a shelf in the back of the room.  He developed experiments and activities based on the equipment he had inherited when starting the job.  Everything today is now been developed by him and used for at least a couple of years.  As to standards, since this was originally designed from the text book which probably were in line with the old standards, he probably is covering some.  He just isn't going out of his way to determine which standards are being met on a given particular lesson instead making sure they get a mix of things covering a broad spectrum of physical science.