Teaching Big Idea Over Time

I realize I take a risk by saying this, but ...

I'm going for National Board Certification this year. Like 4 teachers from my school went for it last year, and 3 got it, and that one teacher... well, I'm sure she wishes that she hadn't told people she was going for it. :P

Anyway, I had my first real freak-out session this week. Ok, so freaking out for me mainly includes listening to loud music and combing my fingers through my hair and since I just got it cut that means it just sticks straight up. Yes, I have stress-o-meter hair. "Oh my! Looks like the Lorax's not having a great day - her hair is pretty much on end! I thought you needed Elmer's glue to get it to stick out like that!"

I'm working on the entry entitled "Teaching a Big Idea Over Time", for which I've chosen F=ma, aka the relationship between force and motion. That's huge. For this Big Idea you have to submit 3 lesson plans, which ideally show
1) a connection to technology
2) a connection to other disciplines
3) how you accomodate your lessons for the specific needs/abilities/interests of your students

And

4) Each lesson has to produce individual student work which shows a progression of the student's understanding towards this Big Idea.

There's a bunch more, but I think just even finding lessons which meet these requirements is tough. I mean, I've got stuff which will work for this, but took a lot of thought to put it all together. Anyway, it was this fourth item which had me in fits this last week. So I re-thought through my 3 lessons, got a new plan (after my hair was 2x normal volume), and in the jubilation of having worked it out danced around my living room to the "King of Spain" by Moxy Fruvous.

Let's this version of The Plan works out. :P