Hello all,

Classroom wise, I started teaching Wednesday, August 20. It has been a little hectic in the planning and the setting up for this new year but I have excitement. I am adding the Mite Project to the beginning of my school year. I am going to introduce my students to the research tomorrow by way of a Paidiea seminar, or a Socratic seminar.  Kestrel Heights is a paidiea school so I thought it would be cool to begin with a seminar.

The experience this summer allowed me to realize that students often don’t get to see the discovery of science.  As teachers, we teach the concepts and recreate labs to show science and scientists operate. And at times, we may do a lab where we don’t know what the outcome will be. But this is an opportunity for the students to engage almost with the scientists in finding out what the relationship is between humans and mites. The students will be able to see that scientists working on this project use the scientific method to make these discoveries and also practice lab safety. So as the scientists make discoveries on these mites, the students will be able to learn that the scientist follow the same steps and record and explain the results of their data.