Thursday Sept.21

On Thursday I stopped in to visit Mr. Borton's third hour class (I usually visit 1st hour). We partially completed the first part of a lab on microorganisms. Mr. Borton splits the class roughly in half, with half completing a reading from the book and answering certain questions and the other half working with the microscopes and completing drawings (making a 2 day lab). He split the kids into pairs and had them draw any "microorganism" they could see in a sample of pond water which they got to choose. He also let them bring in their own pond water sample and use that if they wanted to but it seemed like the kids samples didn't yield much in the way of results. Almost all of the kids enjoyed looking and drawing, though some kids just had a hard time figuring out how to use the microscope, even after you specifically helped them and showed them. At one point Mr. Borton had found a really nice Vorticella and he had all the kids line up to see it; this seemed to break the monotony a little for the kids who didn't care much for reading and answering the questions. Mr. Borton must get a million questions each day. Still some of the kids ask him what they are supposed to do even though he has repeatedly told them and always writes what they need to do each day on the same chalkboard. I hear him saying, "Look at your Study Guide", it says what you need to do.