Alfonso Gonzalez

I teach 5th and 6th grade STEM in the lovely Pacific Northwest in a small, rural town called Chimacum. My goal is to help students discover that all learning is life-long and that 21st century tools can be used for work as well as fun.

Most commented posts

  1. iPads in Science — 22 comments
  2. Awards, Grades and Competition — 18 comments
  3. My ClamCase Experience — 15 comments
  4. Innovative Schooling? — 10 comments
  5. What is On-Task? — 10 comments

Author's posts

Lessons I’ve learned from my Student’s Blogs

This is a post that I wrote when Joe Bower, who teaches middle school aged children in Alberta, Canada, asked me if I would write a guest post on his blog (see it here – Joe has an incredible blog where he writes often about changing education for the better). I jumped at the chance …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2011/01/21/lessons-ive-learned-from-my-students-blogs/

Awards, Grades and Competition

I’ve been reading some great blogs and comments challenging some of schools most treasured traditions. Within my classroom and with the support of my principal I was able to abolish grades in an effort to support student learning. I try to foster cooperation in my classes because we are, after all, learning the same things. …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2011/01/15/awards-grades-and-competition/

Time Well Spent

Vernier LabQuests

Yesterday I was getting some materials ready for my 6th grade Science classes and I noticed how much I enjoyed doing that instead of grading. Had I spent that time reading student work to give them points or a letter grade then I would have postponed replacing the batteries in our 10 LabQuest handheld probe …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2011/01/04/time-well-spent/

Teacher’s Students, Parent’s Children

Something has been bugging me and the more it bugs the more I started to think, “why does that bug me so much?” I’ve been quiet about it but it drives me crazy when teachers are talking to parents and call their children their students. When that happens I think to myself the kids are …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/12/30/teachers-students-parents-children/

Best of 2010

I’ve seen many of my favorite bloggers putting together a list of their top blogs from 2010 so I thought I’d do the same. I use the WordPress plugin Counterize II and here are the top blog posts from most hits to the least hits: iPads in Science Avatars Assessment for Learning iPads Promise and …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/12/30/best-of-2010/

Project Based Learning

I saw this on a Free Technology for Teachers blog, Video – Project Based Learning Explained, and I loved it! Check it out:

Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/12/21/project-based-learning/

WA STEM Grant Proposal

My awesome PLC has accepted the challenge of social networking. I shared the WA STEM grant idea and they all jumped on board. So I wrote a proposal and sent it in! I sure hope we get the grant because I think it’s a great project for us to work on. (If you want to …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/12/18/wa-stem-grant-proposal/

Small Successes

It’s nice to celebrate the small successes, it keeps us sane. 🙂 In my post about microorganisms I shared some of, what I thought, were wonderful critters. A bunch of students in both of my 8th grade classes were right there with me, finding great critters, identifying them and drawing them. Maybe it was because …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/12/18/small-successes/

Social Networking Opportunity

So last Thursday I got a call from the project director of the North Cascades and Olympic Science Partnership (NCOSP), Dr. Carolyn Landel. I was fortunate enough to be able to participate in the NCOSP trainings and summer academies from 2004 to 2007. It was an incredible boost to my learning about Science and how …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/12/13/social-networking-opportunity/

Finding Microorganisms

This year in 8th grade Life Science we started a unit on diversity of life by learning what it means to be considered a living thing. One criterion for organisms to be considered living that students came up with was made of cells. So we’ve been looking for microorganisms. We collected samples of water from …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/12/12/finding-microorganisms/

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