Monday, March 15, 2010
Day 34 - And the ridiculousness continues.
Today was just like yesterday, except we watched the movie once, instead of one and a half times.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Day 33 - FCAT ridiculousness
Today was an FCAT day for 9th and 10th grade (as is tomorrow) so the 11th and 12th graders needed to be off campus from 8:30 until just after noon. Instead of just telling them to not come to school until noon, administration decided that the students needed to go to school and be "productive" for three and a half hours. The catch though, was that they couldn't be on campus during the test. How does this work, you ask? Well, the 12th graders arranged to spend one day volunteering and another day doing a field trip or something. 11th grade was not so lucky. They are lucky enough, however, to be within walking distance of UF's College of Education, so I spent the morning at my other home away from home watching Iron Jawed Angels and grading papers. It was a pretty easy day and I even got to go home early, but it was so painfully unproductive that it's aggravating. Oh well, tomorrow is more of the same so I guess I just have to deal with it. Thank you, No Child Left Behind and standardized testing.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Day 32 - Monday. Ugh.
I don't like Mondays. I know I say this every Monday, but I really don't like having one day with 50 minute classes. I also get used to not seeing all my students in a single day, so Monday's really throw me off. Oh well, it was an alright day. 1st period got to have their lecture with Carrie, which took the entire class period. I then spent 2 hours planning for 4th and 5th period. They needed to finish their activity from last week, but then I needed to fill up the second part of class. I made up another writing activity for them, which I think they took at least somewhat seriously. They had to write an "Imagine" letter. They were supposed to imagine that they lived in the early 1900s, when the women's suffrage movement was gaining a lot of support. They were supposed to write a letter to a future grandchild explaining the issue, their opinion of it, and make "predictions" for the future. We'll see how it goes when I grade their responses.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Day 31 - Friday! Friday! Friday!
Oh, Friday! I was ready to go home before I even left the apartment Friday morning, haha. But you can't act that way as a teacher, and as it turns out, I enjoyed our classes that day. We started our Women's Suffrage unit with Carrie giving an overview of three sections of the next chapter in a one hour lecture. That seemed to be a little long for some of the students, but others seemed to enjoy it. I thought it was interesting, anyway. I planned the other half of the lesson, getting students to start thinking about what it was like to be a woman before the mid 1800s and what was starting to change in the lives of American women after the Civil War. I then wanted the students to use their textbooks and some supplementary materials to list arguments for and against women's rights. I never took classes on this in college and only just started learning about it last week (I planned one lesson on women's rights in October, but that was a while ago). As I was telling some stories to the students, I found myself smiling more than usual and really wanting to convey the information to the students. After doing the activity I think some of them are hopefully more interested in the topic. For more details on some of the anti-suffrage arguments, check out these two sites:
The Arguments of the Anti-Suffragists
Other Fears the Antis' Had if Women Were Considered Equals
Pretty entertaining stuff, or at least I think so. Next week is going to be a mess because of the FCAT (or as a classmate recently called it, the F-That) so we are probably going to show the movie Iron Jawed Angels on the days that are really messed up. It is a powerful movie that I definitely recommend, especially if you are a woman. There are some rock-star women in the past who fought long and hard for suffrage and this movie honors them.
Okay, here was the most entertaining part of the day:
The two students who came to our classroom during third period came back on Friday during lunch. We had some students in the room making up quizzes and other work and didn't really want the boys in there being obnoxious, but we decided to see if they could handle it. After about 10 minutes it was evident that they could not and we sent them out of the room. They whined as they left, but they did indeed leave. Not 5 minutes later, we heard banging on the outside wall of the portable, and a framed poster fell from its perch on the windowsill. I got up and went outside to track down the little boogers, because I knew exactly who had done it. I found them and called them to come talk to me. When one boy tried to excuse himself, another teacher told him to stay because it looked like he "needed to be part of this conversation." I said to both boys, "Stand here and don't talk for the next few minutes. See if you can do that, okay? You can nod and shake your head, and that's it." I asked them if what they had done was considerate and respectful. They of course shook their heads. I said to them, "First of all, your classmate was sitting right there making up her quizzes. Second, you just hit school property who knows how hard. And, third, you made your teacher's poster fall because you hit the building." They looked moderately ashamed, but I could tell that they just wanted to laugh- I guess that's just how they deal with life. Anyway, they were relieved that their regular teacher had not been in the room when it happened. However, on my way back to the portable (after reminding the boys to make smart decisions and to be respectful) I saw my supervising teacher carrying his poster and asking for his mischievous students. He gave them the poster and told them to return it when the frame was fixed. Well, two girls brought the poster back, having fixed it themselves. The boys came and apologized after school, which was proper of them. I feel bad that I had to go all "Ms. St. George" on them, but it was entertaining for me and hopefully made an impression on them. They are good kids and I am in no way upset at them, but MAN teenagers are a handful.
The Arguments of the Anti-Suffragists
Other Fears the Antis' Had if Women Were Considered Equals
Pretty entertaining stuff, or at least I think so. Next week is going to be a mess because of the FCAT (or as a classmate recently called it, the F-That) so we are probably going to show the movie Iron Jawed Angels on the days that are really messed up. It is a powerful movie that I definitely recommend, especially if you are a woman. There are some rock-star women in the past who fought long and hard for suffrage and this movie honors them.
Okay, here was the most entertaining part of the day:
The two students who came to our classroom during third period came back on Friday during lunch. We had some students in the room making up quizzes and other work and didn't really want the boys in there being obnoxious, but we decided to see if they could handle it. After about 10 minutes it was evident that they could not and we sent them out of the room. They whined as they left, but they did indeed leave. Not 5 minutes later, we heard banging on the outside wall of the portable, and a framed poster fell from its perch on the windowsill. I got up and went outside to track down the little boogers, because I knew exactly who had done it. I found them and called them to come talk to me. When one boy tried to excuse himself, another teacher told him to stay because it looked like he "needed to be part of this conversation." I said to both boys, "Stand here and don't talk for the next few minutes. See if you can do that, okay? You can nod and shake your head, and that's it." I asked them if what they had done was considerate and respectful. They of course shook their heads. I said to them, "First of all, your classmate was sitting right there making up her quizzes. Second, you just hit school property who knows how hard. And, third, you made your teacher's poster fall because you hit the building." They looked moderately ashamed, but I could tell that they just wanted to laugh- I guess that's just how they deal with life. Anyway, they were relieved that their regular teacher had not been in the room when it happened. However, on my way back to the portable (after reminding the boys to make smart decisions and to be respectful) I saw my supervising teacher carrying his poster and asking for his mischievous students. He gave them the poster and told them to return it when the frame was fixed. Well, two girls brought the poster back, having fixed it themselves. The boys came and apologized after school, which was proper of them. I feel bad that I had to go all "Ms. St. George" on them, but it was entertaining for me and hopefully made an impression on them. They are good kids and I am in no way upset at them, but MAN teenagers are a handful.
Day 30 - Chapter 15 test, day 2. And a substitute.
I got to school Thursday morning to find our supervising teacher making arrangements to bring in a substitute teacher because his son had gotten sick after arriving at school. This wasn't a big deal- all we had planned for our kids was to review and give their test. We just now had to supervise the AP class for the day.
1st period went pretty well. Some of the students did not seem to appreciate that we wanted to give them time to review, but they didn't fight it that badly. There was some chatter at the start of the test, but as we discovered, our substitute for the day was the mother of one of our students and that might have caused some of the chattiness and giggling. Once they settled down though, they once again proved that even though they can be the most difficult on a normal day, 1st period is the most well-behaved on test day. Assessments subdue them. Let's give a test every day, muwahaha.
During 2nd period I thought the AP students were going to execute a full-out rebellion. We were instructed to give them a "quick-write"- they have 40 minutes to answer an essay question. They get two days to prepare for three questions and then are given one question on which to write. WELL, Carrie and I weren't really in a position to review with them, not really knowing what our supervising teacher expects from them. We are usually grading or planning during their class, not paying attention to what he tells them, and we are certainly not reading the chapters in their textbook. Anyway, some of them did their best on their assignment, others blew it off halfheartedly, and others refused to do it. In response to being told that we were becoming like their teacher I said, "That's okay, it's not my job to make you like me. I am doing what your teacher asked me to do. You can take it up with him when he gets back to school." They weren't mad at me, just frustrated at the situation, and I don't really blame them. But it was nice to be able to stand in front of the students and let them know that they can't make me do what they want by begging and whining. Carrie and I didn't back down and they either did their work or they didn't. It was up to them and their grade will reflect their choice.
Thursday was a weird day, not just because we had a substitute. The 12th grade students were presenting their "Senior Projects". Certain rooms were designated for this event and other teachers were acting as judges. Thus, we had a math class in our portable during 3rd period, which is usually time free from students for us. Many non-senior students were also going to watch their senior friends give their presentations. Therefore, there were students everywhere and it was just a weird day. After lunch (3rd period is split in the middle by lunch) Two of our students, one from 1st period and one from 4th period decided to pay us a visit. Thank goodness they are not in the same class!! As we discovered, all they do when they are together is talk talk talk talk and crack jokes and act like 16 year old boys. Apparently they couldn't find any girls their own age to harass, so they came to pester us. Get excited for Friday's post, because they came back to visit during lunch the next day.
1st period went pretty well. Some of the students did not seem to appreciate that we wanted to give them time to review, but they didn't fight it that badly. There was some chatter at the start of the test, but as we discovered, our substitute for the day was the mother of one of our students and that might have caused some of the chattiness and giggling. Once they settled down though, they once again proved that even though they can be the most difficult on a normal day, 1st period is the most well-behaved on test day. Assessments subdue them. Let's give a test every day, muwahaha.
During 2nd period I thought the AP students were going to execute a full-out rebellion. We were instructed to give them a "quick-write"- they have 40 minutes to answer an essay question. They get two days to prepare for three questions and then are given one question on which to write. WELL, Carrie and I weren't really in a position to review with them, not really knowing what our supervising teacher expects from them. We are usually grading or planning during their class, not paying attention to what he tells them, and we are certainly not reading the chapters in their textbook. Anyway, some of them did their best on their assignment, others blew it off halfheartedly, and others refused to do it. In response to being told that we were becoming like their teacher I said, "That's okay, it's not my job to make you like me. I am doing what your teacher asked me to do. You can take it up with him when he gets back to school." They weren't mad at me, just frustrated at the situation, and I don't really blame them. But it was nice to be able to stand in front of the students and let them know that they can't make me do what they want by begging and whining. Carrie and I didn't back down and they either did their work or they didn't. It was up to them and their grade will reflect their choice.
Thursday was a weird day, not just because we had a substitute. The 12th grade students were presenting their "Senior Projects". Certain rooms were designated for this event and other teachers were acting as judges. Thus, we had a math class in our portable during 3rd period, which is usually time free from students for us. Many non-senior students were also going to watch their senior friends give their presentations. Therefore, there were students everywhere and it was just a weird day. After lunch (3rd period is split in the middle by lunch) Two of our students, one from 1st period and one from 4th period decided to pay us a visit. Thank goodness they are not in the same class!! As we discovered, all they do when they are together is talk talk talk talk and crack jokes and act like 16 year old boys. Apparently they couldn't find any girls their own age to harass, so they came to pester us. Get excited for Friday's post, because they came back to visit during lunch the next day.
Day 29 - Chapter 15 test, Day 1
On Wednesday, 4th and 5th periods took the test for Chapter 15. We spent the beginning of class reviewing vocab and then the essay questions (they have 4 essays to study and have to write two of them on the test). For the most part the grades were pretty good and several students were surprised by their grades being better than they expected. For the most part, Carrie and I were happy with the students' grades. Some students did better than we anticipated and we know others could have done better, but one thing that we are sure of is that nearly every student wrote longer essay responses than they did on the previous tests we have graded. This is one area where I definitely feel like Carrie and I can take credit. The lesson I planned for my second observation was the writing exercise, and we set out very explicit expectations for this test. As we have been taught and now learned first hand, when you expect a certain standard, students tend to live up to it.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Day 28 - Getting caught up
Today was a pretty good day with first period. This morning, one of our school's ESE/maybe psych. specialists came in with her intern to introduce some new strategies for studying vocab. She showed the students a website called Quizlet.com which is really pretty neat and I will seriously consider using it in my own future classroom. Basically, the teacher and/or the students can use the site to create vocab flashcards and play games to study and master the words. I hope some of the students actually use it, if not for this test coming up, then in the future. After that, we did an activity called quiz-quiz-trade. We took the normal structure and made it our own to suit the characteristics of our large and sometimes chaotic classroom. Here was the gist of it:
- The students were split into two groups of 12. One group stood in a circle and the other group matched up with a partner and you end up with an inner circle and an outer circle.
- Each student received flashcard with a vocab word from chapter 15, on which they are being tested this week.
- In their pairs, the students take turns quizzing each other on their words. The person in the inner circle goes first, then the person in the outer circle.
- We gave the pairs 30 seconds to do this. When they heard the chimes of the timer going off, they swapped flashcards and the inner circle shifted over one person to their right and the process repeats.
They caught on pretty quickly and we repeated it somewhere between 5 and 8 times, and ended just before the activity would have broken down due to the students' waning interest. Quiz-quiz-trade is normally a much more free form activity, but we have a large group of students. We probably could have worked the logistics better, so I have no idea if they got anything out of the activity, but it went alright and I would consider using this again in the future if I modified it for even smaller groups of students.
We spent the next few minutes going over the review packet and then spent the rest of the period working on the essay posters. We did not finish with presentations, so that gives us plenty to do Thursday morning before the test.
With all the business of preparing for this week's test and such, Carrie and I fell a little bit behind in updating our students' grades. We had almost all of their work graded, but we hadn't put it in the paper gradebook or the online gradebook yet. There was a giant stack of papers to be put in, but we developed a good system: I made sure it got in the paper gradebook and then Carrie updated it online. It was such a relief to get all caught up on that. And lo and behold, almost all of our students got A's on their last quiz! I was shouting with joy in our empty classroom this afternoon. Granted, there is no excuse for any student to get below an 80 on their open-note journal quizzes (because we take 8 out of 10 questions from the work they are supposed to have done in their journals), but to have nearly all A's was a great feeling. When quizzes make up 40% of the total grade, a good quiz score makes a huge difference for some students.
And in semi-related news, I registered this evening for my last required teacher test! I might still take at least one more, but this is the last test I am forced to pay for, haha.
Send happy thoughts my way on March 12th at 2:30pm!!
- The students were split into two groups of 12. One group stood in a circle and the other group matched up with a partner and you end up with an inner circle and an outer circle.
- Each student received flashcard with a vocab word from chapter 15, on which they are being tested this week.
- In their pairs, the students take turns quizzing each other on their words. The person in the inner circle goes first, then the person in the outer circle.
- We gave the pairs 30 seconds to do this. When they heard the chimes of the timer going off, they swapped flashcards and the inner circle shifted over one person to their right and the process repeats.
They caught on pretty quickly and we repeated it somewhere between 5 and 8 times, and ended just before the activity would have broken down due to the students' waning interest. Quiz-quiz-trade is normally a much more free form activity, but we have a large group of students. We probably could have worked the logistics better, so I have no idea if they got anything out of the activity, but it went alright and I would consider using this again in the future if I modified it for even smaller groups of students.
We spent the next few minutes going over the review packet and then spent the rest of the period working on the essay posters. We did not finish with presentations, so that gives us plenty to do Thursday morning before the test.
With all the business of preparing for this week's test and such, Carrie and I fell a little bit behind in updating our students' grades. We had almost all of their work graded, but we hadn't put it in the paper gradebook or the online gradebook yet. There was a giant stack of papers to be put in, but we developed a good system: I made sure it got in the paper gradebook and then Carrie updated it online. It was such a relief to get all caught up on that. And lo and behold, almost all of our students got A's on their last quiz! I was shouting with joy in our empty classroom this afternoon. Granted, there is no excuse for any student to get below an 80 on their open-note journal quizzes (because we take 8 out of 10 questions from the work they are supposed to have done in their journals), but to have nearly all A's was a great feeling. When quizzes make up 40% of the total grade, a good quiz score makes a huge difference for some students.
And in semi-related news, I registered this evening for my last required teacher test! I might still take at least one more, but this is the last test I am forced to pay for, haha.
Send happy thoughts my way on March 12th at 2:30pm!!
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