First Day of School Tips + What I Cover in My First Units of the Year [Episode 141]

Rebecca 0:00
I literally cannot believe that August is next week, and my oldest is going back to school. I mean, he’s only going into first grade. So I know this is still like, very much, you know, the early days, but it’s still a big transition for us. And I feel like our summer absolutely flew by, and I’m not ready for it to end. And maybe you’re feeling this way too. Maybe the first day of school is looming, and you are not prepared, it feels like summer just started. Or maybe you even just got thrown a new prep last minute, and you don’t even know where to begin with what you want to teach, just start the year off. So if any of these feelings resonates with you, this episode is for you. I’m going to share the four things I always do on the first day of school, regardless of the class or the content. And then I’m going to follow that with an overview of what I cover content wise, in my first units in biology, anatomy, chemistry and physical science just to kick the year off to hopefully inspire those of you who got thrown one of those courses as a prep for the first time last minute and you’re not sure where to begin. So without further ado, let’s dive in. This is secondary science simplified a podcast for secondary science teachers who want to engage their students and simplify their lives. I’m Rebecca joiner from it’s not rocket science. As a high school science teacher turned curriculum writer, I am passionate about helping other science teachers love their jobs, serve their students, and do it all in only 40 hours a week. Are you ready to rock the time you spent in your classroom and actually have a life outside of it? You are in the right place teacher friend. Let’s get to today’s episode.

Now before we get into this episode, I

do want to tell you that my summer project is completed. I’m so relieved. All summer long. I’ve been working on re recording my virtual professional development course. So if you did not know before, there was a secondary science simplified podcast, there was the secondary science simplified virtual professional development course. I ran it for two summers, it was so fun. One summer was 12 weeks. One summer, we did eight weeks, but we had a cohort of over 100 Teachers each summer walk through this course in its entirety. It’s like everything I know about being a secondary science teacher and how to simplify the job so that you can only do it in 40 hours a week. It was epic. I took last summer off because I was working on the chemistry curriculum. And then this summer, I just decided I wanted to make the content as attainable and approachable and digestible as possible. So what I did was, I re recorded all of the content. And now each of the seven units that makes up the full secondary science of a FIDE virtual professional development course is now available on its own. So just like you can buy, it’s not rocket science units on their own and not the full like full year curriculum bundle, you can now buy these mini courses on their own. So there is a core values, mini course relationships, culture or classroom management, lessons, labs, assessments, and work life balance. They’re all available on their own and then you can get the full bundle of the secondary science amplified virtual PD at a 20% discount and I restructured them and I rerecord them, I beef them up a little bit from the original sessions added a couple support Doc’s just to make up for the fact that now we’re This isn’t like a live course where you know, we have weekly sessions and we have like a cohort and we have the Facebook group like those components got removed. So now you can buy these anytime of year. Anytime you need them, you’re not going to be like stuck in a cohort, that’s an unlimited amount of time. And you can take them at your own pace whenever you want. And so they were re recorded to do that. So I finished my summer project, I’m feeling really good about that, you can check out all those virtual PD options at it’s not rocket science classroom.com/pd and see what’s available. So maybe if you’re not going back to school next week, and you have a little bit of time and you want to get some hours, the different mini courses range from one to four hours in terms of potential PD credit you can get for them and you get a certificate that comes with that you can take to your admin and see if they’ll apply it for you know your continuing education credits. But I’m feeling good about that. So now I’m ready to help you guys get prepped for your new school year. So let’s talk about the four things I always do on the first day of school. First and foremost the most important thing is I set the tone. It is so important from day one, that you set the tone for how your class will be run. I do not think that I am mean are strict, but I do run a tight ship, we do things a certain way, I do things to serve you, you’re going to work within my capacity. And we’re all going to do really well working together, I do think that first impressions matter. So you want to start off the year with the vibe that you plan to maintain, so that your students know what to expect. I run a very intense classroom, but it’s also extremely high energy. And so that’s the vibe I like to give off on the first day of school, you need to be yourself here. If you are not the strictest teacher in the world, you don’t have to pretend to be the first day. I think some of the worst advice I ever heard was Don’t smile until December, absolutely not. If you’re a smiley person, you should be smiling. I also think too, like, if you’re not a very flashy teacher, then don’t try to do this like big flashy demo to like impress your students the first day, just be yourself. Consider who you are, and what you care most about. And that’s what you lean into. This is the tone that you set from the first day of the school onward. I think a huge part of that is creating a classroom environment that students feel both safe, and that they feel is both safe and fun to learn in. Okay. And so this begins with students seeing that you are comfortable in your own skin, that you are an authority figure and that you’re in control of the classroom. And so this is also why I think it’s so important from day one, to have procedures that you train your students in, and so that they know how your class will run and that the expectations are very, very clear. The more clearly you teach procedures, and consistently reinforced them, the more you can eliminate disruptions in the class that can then lead to classroom management issues. So I think procedures are a game changer for preventing classroom management issues and allowing you to be proactive, rather than reactive. And I start implementing these procedures, explaining them and modeling them from upfront from day one. That’s part of how I set the tone. I talk all about this and insane detail in the culture, little course virtual PD course that you can find it it’s on architects classroom.com/pd. But I also have a podcast episode about procedures, check out episode 33. That is one of the first episodes I ever did about like the most important procedures, I think you need to teach the very beginning of school, so make sure to check that out. Now, I don’t sit and go through every single procedure on the first day, that would be so boring. But I do point out a few key things like where they can find a pencil or paper or other supplies that they can grab without asking me where the agenda is on my whiteboard. And where I keep due dates, what my bathroom policy is, those are just some of the basics. I’m just kind of introducing them knowing full well that I will spend a lot of energy these first few weeks, reinforcing, clearly communicating and consistently reinforcing over and over again until by about three or four weeks and it’s completely second nature, we’re not having to have these conversations, my personal most important procedure that I want to make sure I do on day one, because we’re going to do it every single day in my classroom is my prime time. My prime times are my bell ringers, I call them that because I think the first five minutes of every class period is the most important time of the class period. It sets the tone for the day. And we’re trying to set the tone for the year on this first day. So I do a primetime on the first day of school in every single class just so we can start getting into that rhythm. And again, they’re going to learn our primetime procedure by doing it. So when they come in, I train them like, hey, take out a piece of paper, we’re going to do something called a primetime, we’re going to do this every single day for the rest of the school year. We do this in silence, you get five minutes to work on your own. And then I will let you know in that five minutes is up and I’m going to show you how you’re going to pass these over. So that then we can go over them together. Now you might be thinking, Okay, so like, what are you going to ask them about on the first day of school? Because typically, the questions are based on things that we covered in class the previous day. And I always let those be open note, by the way. But so for the first day of school, I think you have two options. My personal favorite option is just to give them some fun questions to start getting to know them. So we’ll talk about that in a second. The second option is you can have them do a little bit, something a little more sciency and have them make some observations about something. And I’ll give you some ideas for that a little bit later in this episode. So that’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to do a primetime so we’re setting the tone from day one. My second tip, which is adjacent to that is I want you to begin to get to know your students. I think one of the most important things to do on this first day is to let them know that you care about them. I think that a lot of behavioral issues. All well I think all individual behavioral issues are dealt with on a relational level. I think the whole class behavioral issues are part relational part procedural, but especially those individual issues, that’s a one on one relationship issue. And we want to make sure that you’re building relationships with each and every student. So I want them to know from the first moment that they’re in my classroom, that I care about them as a person, and not just as a student. So here are three ways that I do that. One, I greet them at the door, this is something that I do every day. So again, in line with setting the tone, I’m going to do this on the first day of school, I’m going to be right there, and I’m going to be greeting them, obviously, I’m not going another name. So it’s going to be saying hi, welcome. You know, find your seat. I personally like to do a seating chart. And so what I will do is I will ask their first and last name as they’re coming in the door. And then I’ll tell them where to go ahead and sit. So I have my seats labeled like because they sit in pairs. So like one a one b two, a two B, so I’ll tell them, I’ll be like, Hey, what’s your first and last name, they’ll tell me and then I’ll say, Okay, you’re in three B, go find your seat. So that’s how I’ve tried to greet them on the first day, if you don’t do seating charts, you can just say, hey, then while they’re working on their prime time, because that’s what they’re gonna be doing the first five minutes of class, I use that time to walk around to each desk, and talk to each person face to face. And I take my clipboard with me that has my seating chart on it. And I like to make the first seating chart of the year in alphabetical order by last name, it helps me learn their names a lot faster. So I’ll take my seating chart around and I will go up to them and I will confirm their name and how to pronounce it. I’ll confirm that I know what they like to go by. So for instance, my son’s name is Thomas, his legal name is Thomas, but we call him T. It’s spelled T E, it’s a name, not a letter. That’s his nickname, but it’s all he’s ever known. And so he goes by T. So I would go up to him. And I’d be like, hey, Thomas Joyner. Do you go by Thomas? Or do you go by something else? And he’d say, I go by T. And I’d say, How do you spell that, and I would write it out. You also want to know you how to pronounce their names. So I will like write out phonetically how to say their name, so I can make sure I’m saying it correctly. I think this gives them a lot of dignity to know the first day that the most important thing to me is that I know their name that they like to go by and how to pronounce it. And so I walk around, and I do that. And I try to memorize their names by the second day of school. At the worst case, by the end of the first week of school, I try to have all their names memorized. Again, this is one reason why I love a seating chart. And it helps me kind of memorize where they are. And I can learn them in alphabetical order first. And then the third thing I do to get to know them, so I’m greeting them out the door, I’m going in making sure I know what they like to go by and how I pronounce their name. And then I’m going to do some sort of get to know you questionnaire. I love having this information at the start of the year. I include this in my relationships, virtual PD course, the one that I use, but you don’t need anything fancy, just whip something up, you can make a Google form, you can make it handwritten, but you’re just trying to get some basic information about them. I just like to know like students that do have after school jobs, I like to know students that ride the bus because that makes after school tutoring a little bit difficult. I like to know if they’re involved in any school activity. So I can go watch those things. I like to know what they like to how they like to spend their time, like what they do for fun. And also it’s an opportunity, I like to ask them like a gajillion times. What’s the best way to contact their parent or guardian? Who’s their parenting guardian? What’s their name? And how can I best contact them? What’s their email or phone number, even though a lot of that stuff is in like our you know, the learning portal for your school, the learning management system, then even though you’re probably going to be getting some of that information from guidance counselor’s and maybe even like back to school night, I like to ask it again. And that way I can make sure that they’re putting it in writing too. And I can cross reference all those things. So those are the three things I like to do to start getting to know them. The third thing I make time to do is review the lab safety contract. So I know this sounds so boring, but hear me out. I have found in my conversations with 1000s of science teachers over the last nine years that it’s not rocket science has existed or almost coming on 10 years, we’re at nine and a half. Okay? That lab days are extremely stressful for many science teachers. You know, mostly it’s because your class sizes are much too big for the space you have or you don’t have resources. So safety becomes a big stressor for you. And I take lab safety extremely seriously. I teach it over and over again, every single lab I do I review it with students. However, I have found that from a liability standpoint, your students and their parents and guardians must sign a lab safety contract at the beginning of the year. I cannot emphasize this enough. I think this needs to be a department wide policy. I do not think you should be the only one doing it. So I think you should get your whole department on board for this. But basically what I do is I do not let a student step into a lab space until they have some day and their parents have signed a lab safety contract. So what I do on day one, is I just kind of hit the highlights so that they feel comfortable that I’ve reviewed it enough that they can take it home and they can sign it and they can get their parents to sign it. And then I collected this this is like their only homework the first week of school is every single day I’m hounding them for the lab safety contract signed, okay. Typically we start school on like a Tuesday or Wednesday, I’m trying to get it signed by Friday, I’m asking every single day because I like to probably do my first lab by that first Monday. So I want them to have this. It’s very rare that I don’t get it back. And if I don’t, that student has to sit out of the first lab and take notes, which they realize is absolutely dreadfully boring. And they tend to get it back to me asap after that. So I get that thing signed, and I keep it in a folder and I have it in case anything comes up. I can say to the parent and guardian, you signed it, your students signed it, we agreed on this, then I will refer back to this document throughout the year, I like to make a photocopy of the signed ones actually make my teachers didn’t do it, because that’s a waste of my time. And then I keep the original, I give them a photocopy and they can keep it in their binders at the front. And then before law, we can go back and hit the things that are specific to different labs that we do to make sure that they understand this. Again, I think this is so important that this is a department wide policy, it helps students know that this is going to be expected every science class they take. And so I think it’s really important, you do not need to make these yourself. If you go to Flynn’s website, Flynn sigh.com flinsci.com. They have a great general lab safety contract there that you can use for any science. They also have the Spanish version of it, they have a lab safety quiz as well. But Carolina also has some great ones go to carolina.com. They have some subject specific ones. They have like a physics one and anatomy and Earth slash environmental biology, chemistry. So I would absolutely check those out too. You can look those up really easily. They’re all free. Obsessed, you don’t need to write those yourself. Also, if you have time. One thing you can do on the first day, I typically end up doing the second day, but is a fun activity to introduce lab safety. So I like to do something called lab safety Barbie. Essentially, the summer before my first year teaching, I found a life sized Barbie on eBay and then i semi destroyed her. And so I like to set up a little crime scene around her and my demo table at the front with all her different injuries. And then what you can do for the prime time is have them make observations that of her injuries, and then tell me ways that what are different things she should have done to prevent those injuries like part of her hair is singed off because she should have had it pulled back from her face in a ponytail. You know, her hand is burned because she’s holding a piece of glassware that must have been hot. So you always treat all glassware as if it’s hot, because cold glass and hot glass look the same. You know, it’s an opportunity to do that, well, you may not have time on the first day. So I kind of like this better for day two. It’s kind of like a fun factor for them to hit up the first day too. And I like to do dramatic things. So it kind of tracks again with my personality and setting the tone. But you could also do something like this for day one. Again, you may not have time, though, but that’s an option two. The fourth thing you need to do, and it’s the last but most certainly not least, is you need to do some sort of science. So yes, we’re going to set the tone, what yes, we’re going to begin to get to know our students. Yes, we’re going to review the lab safety contract, we’re spending five, maybe 10 minutes on that the rest of class, we need to do some sort of science, okay, we want them to know that from day one, they’re going to be learning science every single day, we will be doing stuff, there will not be wasted time. And I can tell you right now that 90% of the classes they’re going to on this first day of school are just going over syllabi, and it’s so boring. So we’re going to do the syllabus like day two or three, we’re going to dive into just doing something fun right now. And it doesn’t have to be like a lab, I don’t think it should be allowed because you want that lab safety contract signed. But it can be simple, it can be a demo anything. So here are a couple ideas for my favorite way to get them doing some science on the first day. So these are content specific suggestions. So for biology, I have a free activity in my TPT store, I’ll link in the show notes. It’s for the characteristics of life, students basically work with a partner and they do a card sort. And they’re trying to categorize the cards as living or nonliving. And then based on their categorizations, they make a list of the characteristics that qualified something as living or not. And then we come together as a class, we do a discussion, we come up with a class list. And it’s a great way to introduce what it means to be alive since biology is of course about the study of life. And then if you don’t have time to fully go over it, you can revisit it day two, and then kind of jump into going over your syllabus about all the ways you’re going to explore the study of life this school year, and it’s a great transitional thing. I love it. It’s easy. It’s very minimal prep work.

I love that it gets them working with a partner as well, because my class is defined by a lot of teamwork, a lot of partner work, and even my most antisocial students need to get used to kind of doing some things like that. So it starts getting creating that as a part of my class culture, which is again setting the tone for anatomy. You could totally do the characteristics of life activity if you want to review that from biology because anatomy is typically an upperclassman course, they’re taking as like an elective science, but my favorite thing to do that’s anatomy specific IQ is go to the art room in your school and get those giant pieces of butcher block paper. Typically the art teacher just has like reams of them in the room and pre cut them. So they’re like life size, okay, like six, seven feet, you know long so that a body can lay on it. And then you’re going to put students in groups of three or four, and have them lay one group member on the paper. Typically, I like to do a boy in case of girls wearing a skirt or something like that. And you’re going to trace an outline of their body. And then what you’re going to do as the teacher is you’re going to put a list on the whiteboard of like 10 to 15 Oregon’s you can pick whichever ones you want. And say I want you to draw these organs on the body that you just outlined. So draw whatever you think their shape is, and then draw where you think their location is, in try to draw to scale. Okay, y’all, this is hysterical to watch. Okay, first of all, they have no idea what shape any of these organs are, which is fine, like, you don’t need to expect them to have prior knowledge. But second, it is hilarious to see where they put some of these things. And so you’re going to do this. And then one thing you can do too, if you like, if you think the drawing the shape of it’s too hard, you can pull up a PowerPoint slide with clip art of each organ. So they at least have a general idea of the shape and then make the focus more about where it goes and the size it is within that person’s body. But what I think is so fun, is hanging these around the room. And then the first few weeks, as you’re doing an overview of body systems, you can kind of point out some things. Another thing you can do, too, that’s so fun is roll these up and save them in the corner of your classroom until the end of the year. And then one of the ways you can review for your final exam is have them get into the original groups, and correct their drawings and a different color on the same piece of paper, y’all they will die laughing, seeing what they did day one, like where they put these different organs. And it’s just a really fun thing to do. Another thing you can do if you want is go outside and do this on sidewalk chalk, which is fun, but it could feel a little chaotic the first day of school to go outside, the only borrow a sidewalk choose you can’t reference it later. I love having the butcher block paper to reference later. So I highly recommend that’s probably my very favorite first day of school activity. It’s so fun and hilarious. For physical science, if you teach Physical Sciences is one that’s like specifically for you. It could also you know, this could be adjacent to physics can be adjacent to chemistry. But I like to get my students excited that they’re going to be thinking a lot in this course. So if you’ve ever heard of the drinking bird look up drinking bird science toy, that’s a great thing you can do for like kind of just to get them doing some inquiry based thinking, if you want to do a demo, my favorite first day of school demo, it’s really great for chemistry is the death of a gummy bear demo, you can also Google that you do need to make sure you have a working hood vent or at the very least a window that you can do this out of. But it’s also a great way to introduce into lab safety, and tell them the importance of not eating a lab. So I like to do that one as well. Also, if you’re just teaching a physics specific course, it’s always fun to drop stuff out the window. That’s a great crowd pleaser.

So you know, depending on how messy you want to get, you can have students drop a few various items that are similar shapes outside the window and predict which will hit the ground first, it’s a great way to start opening up the conversation about acceleration due to gravity, talk about air resistance, that kind of thing. So those are some ideas for that. And then last but not least, I’m going to share just this general activity you can do that’s just really more than nature of science. This is what I did the first day of AP Biology, I learned this at my A psi, my AP Summer Institute, my instructor told us this. It’s like a cube activity. And it’s a great inquiry activity. So if you Google inquiry cube activity from chapter six, and teaching about evolution and the nature of science, it should come up. Okay, I know that’s like so specific, but I don’t have a link for it. But if you Google that it should hopefully come up. It’s such a great little cube activity, essentially, you have these cubes, and they have different things written on each side of them. And so you assemble the cubes out of paper, and then you’re going to tape them so that one side of the ground is covered, you’re gonna find if you search that exactly, I just said inquiry cube activity, Chapter Six teaching about evolution and the nature of science and go to images, you’re going to see it, but there’s kind of a couple levels of it one’s a number level and one’s a word level. And these are by the National Academies is like going to be the website where it’s going to pull up. Again, I just don’t have a link because the link is constantly changing. But what you do is you have this cube and you assemble the cube out of paper and then you tape it down so that one part of the cube is blocked. And what students do is they work in groups, and they look for patterns on the visible sides of the cube the five size they can see and they try to predict what is on side six. So the first thing you do you have these pre taped on the tables before they come in. So the first thing you’ll do is the number one because that one’s a lot easier, when then the second thing we’ll do is the name one. And that’s a lot harder. So have them try that it’s a great way just again to stretch them, get them really thinking. And again, scientific thinking on day one. That’s what we want them to do. So I hope this helped you know what to do on your first day of school, again, set the tone, begin to get to know your students review your lab safety, contract and do science. And I know I reference a lot of things. So check the show notes for all those links, so you can access those. Now, the last thing I want to do before I let you go is super specific for those of you who teach biology, chemistry, anatomy or physical science. But a question I get a lot is, what do I cover the first unit if this is like a new prep for me, so I’m gonna go over super quickly, what I cover in each of those, there’s no right or wrong thing here. But I’m gonna go basically in the order in which the grade level is that I typically taught these courses. So physical science was a course, at the schools I taught, and that was either eighth grade or ninth grade. So I’m going to be doing a little a lot of like basics with them, assuming they have like no prior knowledge. So for my first physical science unit, I call it the scientific method unit. We cover lab safety and equipment and a lot of detail. We cover measurement and using like different tools with accuracy and precision. I do an overview of dimensional analysis and scientific notation. And then we also cover the overview of like the scientific method and walking through a very basic lab. But we cover independent variable dependent variable constants, control groups, we cover laws versus theories, observations versus inferences. So a lot of that just like basic science, vocabulary is covered there. Because I feel like again, this is a course that my younger students are taking on, I’ve always was a high school science teacher, except for the few years I taught at a private school where I had a few sections of eighth grade physical science, so I’m covering the basics with them. Now biology is a little different, this was always a ninth or 10th grade level course. So a little bit older. So I always I call my first Biology Unit biology basics, because I want to cover the most foundational topics for biology that we’re going to build on the rest of the year. So the first concept I cover is I do have like a nature of science concept. So this is where we go, we review a lot of those things like law theory, you know, qualitative, quantitative, IVDD, that kind of thing. And then we actually design we do an inquiry investigation, we spent about a week on it. And we design an inquiry investigation from scratch. But I love it, because it gives great opportunity to kind of talk through all those things, and really do it practically. But it’s a step up from what we do in physical science, because, again, they’re older, hopefully, they’ve seen a lot of this before. And in designing the investigation and gives us built in opportunities to review safety and equipment, and all of that, I also do talk about the tech design process a little bit. And we do a little activity with that, that I think is pretty fun to kind of contrast it with the scientific investigation process, then we get straight into biology. This is almost like my biochem unit is my very first one because then we jump into chemistry of life. And we kind of talk about matter and the atom and properties of water that make water so special and unique. Again, the most basic things about chemistry that they need for biology. And then we finish up the first unit talking about macromolecules. Y’all I urge you to cover macromolecules very first thing and then bring it up every single unit after that, like macromolecules are foundational for the entire Biology Unit. So I love starting the year with them, especially because your students are going to have the most energy at the beginning of the year after summer. And they’re also going to want to impress you the most at the beginning of the year. So let’s start with a hard topic and like knock it out early. Okay. I really love starting micro and moving towards macro as opposed to starting with ecology, the ecology, so easy and fun. Save it for the end of the year when you have no energy. That’s my hot take. Okay, now next my students would move on to chemistry is that the 10th or 11th grade course. So my chemistry unit, my first one is introduction to chemistry, we start with doing a measurement review. And we really do a lot of conversions and dimensional analysis there. We also learn about sig figs. And we do a very brief review on IV dV. Remember my students, when I tried to private school, they came from biology into chemistry. So they would if I’m teaching both of those courses, they’re having me two years in a row. So I’m assuming that this IVDD stuff is just a review. We kind of review lab equipment and stuff very basically. But then a lot of that is more as we go. I do have like one assignment because I like a lot of the lab equipment they’ve never used until we get to chemistry. So we do review some equipment with them. But it’s a lot more about measurement and using those things. Well, I covered dimensional analysis in scientific notation with chemistry as well. Even if I had them for physical science, that’s hard and they need that all over again. But the sig figs of significant figures is new for chemistry. And then we really get into the chemistry by introducing matter. So this is something they should have seen in physical science, but we’re going to review it again. We talked about classifying matter, physical versus chemical changes, signs that a chemical reaction has occurred. We talked about density. We talked about the law of conservation of mass There’s just like a lot of fun like activities and labs to do with that. And I like to start the year really lab and activity heavy. So that’s kind of how I start, and then our second unit will start getting into the atom. So I like to start a little bit more with content, and they’re familiar with, I think the reason being, I think students are really intimidated by chemistry. So I do want to have some content in this first unit that feels memorable and relatable. So it’s a little bit less overwhelming for them, especially to balance out to all the math, I do think it’s important to start with math right away so that we can start building those skills up. But I also understand that that’s hard for them. So that’s why I like to balance out with the matter stuff. And then last, but not least, for me, in my content is anatomy. This was always in 11th, or 12th grade elective science course. So my students will have already taken biology and chemistry before I see them. So I’m not doing any like lab safety equipment, IVDD, I’m not doing any of that stuff with them. They should have seen this in many, many years of science by the time they get to anatomy with me. So we jump in, we do a biology review. That’s my first concept. We review this cell and the organelles and macromolecules. And enzymes, like I just tried to hit the highlights of like what is like the most basic stuff from biology, I want to make sure that they remember, then we jump into homeostasis, because that also was covered in biology one, but we do it at a much deeper level, we get into you know, feedback loops, and signal transduction pathways and cell communication, that kind of stuff. And then the we ended the first unit, my introduction to anatomy unit with something I call anatomy basics. So we do an overview of the 12 main organ systems, we do a lot of all the directional terms, I do a tissues overview. So this is another unpopular opinion, I don’t do a standalone tissues unit, mainly because I don’t love tissues. So I know they’re extremely important. And a lot of people get really passionate about them. But I never had microscopes. I don’t love tissues. I think it’s kind of boring. And so I’d rather focus on what I think is fun. And let them learn all the tissues in insane detail. One, we can incorporate it throughout the year really easily. But to they can learn that all in college anatomy. So I just do an overview of that. And really focus more on let’s just make sure we understand the directional terms and all that. And like you know what the different body systems are that we’re going to cover. That’s why I call it anatomy basic. So that’s how I structured that unit. So I hope that little you know, five or six minute overview gave you some ideas if you’re trying to structure your first units. I will link all my first units in the show notes. You want to check those out and what’s included in them. So that’s it. I hope you found this episode helpful and you’re feeling equipped going into the new school year. And I would love it if you haven’t left a review for the podcast today y’all I cannot tell you how much it means to me for to hear from y’all. So leave a review. If you are go if you are already back in school, or if you go back next week, it’s your turn to leave a review. And make sure you check out the show notes. It’s not rocket science classroom.com/episode 141 So you can access all those clickable links. All right, teacher friends.

That wraps up today’s episode. If you’re looking for an easy way to start simplifying your life as a secondary science teacher, head to It’s not rocket science classroom.com/challenge to grab your classroom reset challenge. And guess what? It’s totally free. Thanks so much for tuning in and I’ll see you here next week. Until then, I’ll be rooting for you Teacher friend.