Mini-CAST

Anyone who is anyone in the science teaching world of Texas has heard of a little thing called CAST. It brings lots of science people from all over the state together once a year to share ideas on how to teach and what to use. I was able to attend the mini-CAST in my area this weekend and I had a ton of fun. I even used some of the stuff today.

There is a collaborative at UTD for the Geology unit. It extends from K through 8th grade and I received black line masters and materials to teach it. The cool thing is that they do really fun experiments. They taught plate tectonics using snacks.... icing, graham crackers, and fruit rollups. They told us great ways to teach convection... including what I am doing today as a review. I just put a beaker on a hot plate and put some paper holes in it. As the water boiled, the kids could see that the paper was sinking and floating as the water cooled and heated. Pretty neat!

I also sat through one about atoms. It went all through atoms without actually saying any of the key terms... which isn't helpful for TAKS, but is really helpful for having kids visualize atoms. They even gave us samples so that we could take it home and do it ourselves. SO SIMPLE!

I visited some helpful boothes. At one of them I bought a blow-up "beach ball" that has good geology review questions on it. I think it was more specifically about the rock cycle, but you could use it as an assessment, and also give it to kids when they are finished with regular work. I haven't opened it yet, but I am hoping I will get to make some of my owrn for other topics so that we can use them for our TAKS review days. At another one, I bought some cut outs that I have had laminated and my teacher aide is working on cutting them out (poor thing). But one set is used to draw out the rock cycle and another set we will use in the future to do the phases of the moon on a regular calendar. Its a whole class lesson. The last booth that I found really helpful was an Astronomy booth. These guys live pretty close by and they can either come to us or we can go to them and they will share their telescopes with us as well as let the kids take a picture of the stars and nebulas. HOW COOL! The pictures are then put on a disc for us to take back with us. One of the 7th grade teachers and I were thinking of starting an Astronomy club. This would be the perfect field trip for us and its free as long as we can drive there. (And guess who will have their CDL license at the end of the week. WHOOP!)

The last class I went to was about polymers. They introduced us to the concept and then showed us all kinds of experiments and demonstrations we can do with them. We did density in preforms (fat test tube looking things that were originally created to be blown into 2 liter coke bottles but have small defects which put them in the toss pile.) They gave us samples of fake snow, the chemical that soaks up and holds liquid in diapers, and some crystals that absorb so much water that they become 95% water, but when they dry out they return to the original size.

The only thing I noticed that dissapointed me was that there were not a lot of young teachers there. The age difference was HUGE! They kept referring to things that either happened before I was born or while I was too small to remember. I already feel out of place with my students sometimes but this was the other extreme. I know these teachers have been around forever and they want to teach us but I just want to find a way to get more young teachers involved in these conferences and stuff. Personally, I would not be successful if it weren't for the mentors that I have. It just makes me sad that other new teachers aren't taking the time and effort to make themselves and their students excel.

Have a great week... I know I will! -coach b!