Another snow day for Muncie Community School Corporation. This means that I can use this day as a way to catch up on student teaching things that I need to get done, which is essentially my portfolio work.
Things to look forward to: With this day off I can better prepare for a potential project I was going to have my Pre-Algebra Students work on in class. This was going to be creating their own shape using stipulations of other shapes (i.e. pair of perpendicular sides, all sides congruent, two pairs of sides congruent, all angles acute, all angles obtuse, etc.). Basically what I was going for is some creativity while using the boundaries that other shapes have to have. They would have to use, I'm thinking, two stipulations, that I will be giving, and create a shape with at most 10 sides, and they get to name it their own name.
Let me know what you think about this project idea. I know I may not have a whole lot of time for it, but I think it could be something I do in the future.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Feb. 24th
It's Thursday, and today is not only a day for Countdown to ISTEP, but it is also the monthly ISTEP prep assessment test, or STI test. So I basically did absolutely no teaching.
In first hour, my CT (cooperating teacher, which is what I will refer him as from now on) jumped in to help me teach the class the countdown to ISTEP problems. I didn't really like that this happened, especially since I hadn't yet collected all of the ISTEP Prep Tests from the students. He thought I was just going to let the students try it all on their own. We talked after class and mentioned that as well as how he was going to start ducking out more often, to see how I am with the class without him around.
After the 1st hour class, I basically did all handing out of papers, collecting, and going over the countdown to ISTEP problems, which consisted of 2 problems of finding perimeter, area, or volume of irregular shapes that have some sort of missing side. One problem had the use of Pythagorean Theorem to find a missing side of a trapezoidal figure. It was a pretty useful set of problems for all the students to complete.
In my Algebra classes, I luckily had enough time to hand out the quiz and talk about what silly mistakes they all made. They realized after we started talking about it. It is hard for them to notice when something is factorable right now, and I said there is nothing wrong with always using box method, as inconvenient as it can be sometimes. Many of them realized their silly mistakes they missed. Some were confused when they got counted off for a "right answer." Their answer was similar for me asking for something to be completely reduced and their answer is 3/6. Well this can be reduced, and since I asked for simplest form, they missed one out of 2 of the points on those problems, which was everyone but 4 or 5 students from both Algebra classes combined. As an entire school day, I thought it kind of sucked since I really did no teaching. We are already in a crunch for time due to the curriculum calendar, and I really haven't done a whole lot since the start of Countdown to ISTEP. Tomorrow is the last day for the countdown because next week is all ISTEP. I had one student ask me "Since we are taking ISTEP next week, can we just hang out in class?" I chuckled a little and said that we wouldn't. Though some days I think a cool video might be something I might do, lol.
In first hour, my CT (cooperating teacher, which is what I will refer him as from now on) jumped in to help me teach the class the countdown to ISTEP problems. I didn't really like that this happened, especially since I hadn't yet collected all of the ISTEP Prep Tests from the students. He thought I was just going to let the students try it all on their own. We talked after class and mentioned that as well as how he was going to start ducking out more often, to see how I am with the class without him around.
After the 1st hour class, I basically did all handing out of papers, collecting, and going over the countdown to ISTEP problems, which consisted of 2 problems of finding perimeter, area, or volume of irregular shapes that have some sort of missing side. One problem had the use of Pythagorean Theorem to find a missing side of a trapezoidal figure. It was a pretty useful set of problems for all the students to complete.
In my Algebra classes, I luckily had enough time to hand out the quiz and talk about what silly mistakes they all made. They realized after we started talking about it. It is hard for them to notice when something is factorable right now, and I said there is nothing wrong with always using box method, as inconvenient as it can be sometimes. Many of them realized their silly mistakes they missed. Some were confused when they got counted off for a "right answer." Their answer was similar for me asking for something to be completely reduced and their answer is 3/6. Well this can be reduced, and since I asked for simplest form, they missed one out of 2 of the points on those problems, which was everyone but 4 or 5 students from both Algebra classes combined. As an entire school day, I thought it kind of sucked since I really did no teaching. We are already in a crunch for time due to the curriculum calendar, and I really haven't done a whole lot since the start of Countdown to ISTEP. Tomorrow is the last day for the countdown because next week is all ISTEP. I had one student ask me "Since we are taking ISTEP next week, can we just hang out in class?" I chuckled a little and said that we wouldn't. Though some days I think a cool video might be something I might do, lol.
Feb. 23rd
It's a Wednesday, or the middle of the week, sort of. This week was a 4 day week so technically half way through the week is about 4th period sometime. Anyways, back to what actually happened today.
Pre- Algebra Class
With all the delays and Countdown to ISTEP, I didn't really know where I was going with my lesson plans. I was unprepared for the day and made a lesson plan blindly for a topic on solving for the area of trapezoids. This turned out to be not where me and my cooperating teacher were actually thinking. We decided to go with learning about facts about Polynomials instead. Before this the countdown to ISTEP was a couple of problems on using area, perimeter, and volume of regular geometric shapes (cylinder, rectangular prism, triangle). After that (longer than I expected it to take) I decided to do something I saw in their book that I quickly glanced at. This was how to find the amount of angle degrees on the inside of a polynomial. I thought it was a cool little way to show them how to do this. No matter what shape I drew, I could make triangles on the inside of each shape by connecting corners. I was surprised because both classes picked up on the pattern, realizing that there were always two less triangles than there are sides.
In my 5th period class, one student asked me "Well what about a million sides or infinite sides." I thought this was a great question and then I proceeded to tell the class that this student was looking for a formula to work for any polygon. They thought it was pretty cool and when the class was coming to a close is when I finished the explanation on the formula. Yet again, there are the students that never pay attention but then get mad at me when I don't help them every single time. I think it is just not fair to the people who try and don't understand. Those people deserve my attention. I think all students deserve my attention, I just get to the more deserving first. This class seems to be much more enthused about math in general. They have a lot of energy, and sometimes it is nearly impossible to get their focus in the right direction. Today seemed like one of those days where I had all their attention in the right direction. I even had the normal trouble makers working with me. One of my better days with the class.
Algebra Classes
These classes seem like they are miles ahead in terms of cooperation, which they are. Maturity is an entirely different story when it comes to the difference to the Pre-Algebra classes. Anyways, I should probably focus more towards actually writing this. Welp...I just went on facebook for about 10 minutes there, man I hate that stupid social networking site sometimes. Lost my train of thought..............Oh yeah! These honors kids had about as much difficulty with the countdown to ISTEP problems as the Pre-Algebra classes. I thought it was kind of weird since they had taken the class on most of their 8th grade standards the year before. What was really weird is that none of the students remembered anything about perimeter. Some of them didn't even know what the question was asking. It was really bothering me that they didn't know something from a class they had taken the year before. Not that they didn't know it, but they looked at it like it was something completely new. So this took about 10 minutes longer, in 7th period than I thought it was going to.
Today was the day of my first quiz given in my Algebra classes. Seems like a long time to not give any quizzes or tests, but with all the ISTEP requirements lately, you seem to run out of time and energy. This quiz was on polynomials, mostly factoring, with a few multiplying binomials and dividing polynomials by monomials. I assumed the last three that weren't factoring would be gimme problems. After grading, I was quite surprised by the results. Many students had 8x/8x = 0. This clearly isn't the case because anything divided by itself is 1. They also missed the easy multiplication ones. The averages for the two classes were 68% and 61% respectively. I was extremely disappointed. Mainly because the students made it seem like they understood it. I even went over a little bit at the end of yesterdays class to give them a go ahead on what might be on this quiz.
In other news, I had my first benchmark conference today with my Cooperating Teacher. This went extremely well, we agreed on just about everything. He gave me good pointers on discipline, like following through on stuff, not that I wasn't, but more of a hint for future reference. It was nice to see that he gave me a great grade on my interaction and relationship with the students. I really feel like I have a great relationship with the students. I honestly wish that sometimes, you could just teach the same kids over and over for years, but then they wouldn't experience different teaching styles. I think the relationship with the students is one of the best things you can have as a teacher. It is important to have a solid teacher-student relationship to even gain the respect you would expect. If you don't have a solid relationship, you are going to lose your classes as well as any respect from your students.
Pre- Algebra Class
With all the delays and Countdown to ISTEP, I didn't really know where I was going with my lesson plans. I was unprepared for the day and made a lesson plan blindly for a topic on solving for the area of trapezoids. This turned out to be not where me and my cooperating teacher were actually thinking. We decided to go with learning about facts about Polynomials instead. Before this the countdown to ISTEP was a couple of problems on using area, perimeter, and volume of regular geometric shapes (cylinder, rectangular prism, triangle). After that (longer than I expected it to take) I decided to do something I saw in their book that I quickly glanced at. This was how to find the amount of angle degrees on the inside of a polynomial. I thought it was a cool little way to show them how to do this. No matter what shape I drew, I could make triangles on the inside of each shape by connecting corners. I was surprised because both classes picked up on the pattern, realizing that there were always two less triangles than there are sides.
In my 5th period class, one student asked me "Well what about a million sides or infinite sides." I thought this was a great question and then I proceeded to tell the class that this student was looking for a formula to work for any polygon. They thought it was pretty cool and when the class was coming to a close is when I finished the explanation on the formula. Yet again, there are the students that never pay attention but then get mad at me when I don't help them every single time. I think it is just not fair to the people who try and don't understand. Those people deserve my attention. I think all students deserve my attention, I just get to the more deserving first. This class seems to be much more enthused about math in general. They have a lot of energy, and sometimes it is nearly impossible to get their focus in the right direction. Today seemed like one of those days where I had all their attention in the right direction. I even had the normal trouble makers working with me. One of my better days with the class.
Algebra Classes
These classes seem like they are miles ahead in terms of cooperation, which they are. Maturity is an entirely different story when it comes to the difference to the Pre-Algebra classes. Anyways, I should probably focus more towards actually writing this. Welp...I just went on facebook for about 10 minutes there, man I hate that stupid social networking site sometimes. Lost my train of thought..............Oh yeah! These honors kids had about as much difficulty with the countdown to ISTEP problems as the Pre-Algebra classes. I thought it was kind of weird since they had taken the class on most of their 8th grade standards the year before. What was really weird is that none of the students remembered anything about perimeter. Some of them didn't even know what the question was asking. It was really bothering me that they didn't know something from a class they had taken the year before. Not that they didn't know it, but they looked at it like it was something completely new. So this took about 10 minutes longer, in 7th period than I thought it was going to.
Today was the day of my first quiz given in my Algebra classes. Seems like a long time to not give any quizzes or tests, but with all the ISTEP requirements lately, you seem to run out of time and energy. This quiz was on polynomials, mostly factoring, with a few multiplying binomials and dividing polynomials by monomials. I assumed the last three that weren't factoring would be gimme problems. After grading, I was quite surprised by the results. Many students had 8x/8x = 0. This clearly isn't the case because anything divided by itself is 1. They also missed the easy multiplication ones. The averages for the two classes were 68% and 61% respectively. I was extremely disappointed. Mainly because the students made it seem like they understood it. I even went over a little bit at the end of yesterdays class to give them a go ahead on what might be on this quiz.
In other news, I had my first benchmark conference today with my Cooperating Teacher. This went extremely well, we agreed on just about everything. He gave me good pointers on discipline, like following through on stuff, not that I wasn't, but more of a hint for future reference. It was nice to see that he gave me a great grade on my interaction and relationship with the students. I really feel like I have a great relationship with the students. I honestly wish that sometimes, you could just teach the same kids over and over for years, but then they wouldn't experience different teaching styles. I think the relationship with the students is one of the best things you can have as a teacher. It is important to have a solid teacher-student relationship to even gain the respect you would expect. If you don't have a solid relationship, you are going to lose your classes as well as any respect from your students.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Feb. 22nd
Back from a 3 day weekend, and we get a 2 hour delay. This screwed up any chance of my planning on what was going on today. We were originally scheduled to have an ISTEP Prep test in mathematics today, but due to the delay, it will be on Thursday now. What made it hard for me to plan at all was the lack of knowledge I had in knowing whether or not I was going to administer the ISTEP Prep test, and if I was even going to have any time in my class to accomplish anything. To top it all off, the teachers had a mandatory ISTEP meeting which resulted in class starting 10 minutes later than the original plan. This gave me even less time for preparation of my 1st period class. It was a day where I basically winged everything.
Pre- Algebra Classes:
It seemed that I administered the ISTEP prep pretty fluently today in my Pre-Algebra Classes. In my 1st hour class I was able to even sort of teach about using the formula of the area of a triangle to find the area of a trapezoid. It was pretty fun. In my 5th Period class I had barely enough time to explain the Countdown to ISTEP worksheet, and the next thing I knew I had run out of time.
Algebra Classes:
These classes are tough during a 2 hour delay. One class is the normal hour long, while the other class is a pathetic 29 minutes. Because of this, I decided to give back the class that had their normal time their 10 minutes of reading at the beginning of class. To remind anyone of why we normally give the students of the 4th period time to read is because they have an hour long class, when most classes are 50 minutes. This gives students a chance to read the AR books, where they get a grade and points based on their test scores of reading comprehension of a book.
Back to the classes though, where I was able to help students better understand their ability with factoring polynomials. They all knew what they were doing, just didn't know how to recognize the easy ones, so when they thought they had to use the box method for bigger numbers, they really only had to use the factoring strategy for the squaring of binomials. This, I think helped them out, and I decided to have them hand in their old work and assign a new worksheet. This one had a small, simple amount of factoring problems, and it seemed like the ease of these problems relieved their stress a little bit. The first worksheet I gave them had many difficult problems with large common factors and large numbers in general. I figured if they learned how to solve these harder problems, it will be easier for them to solve easier problems in the future. I mentioned that I will be having a quiz over this material tomorrow. They didn't look too excited about it, but at least I gave them some kind of warning before I just threw it at them, in case they wanted to review anything.
Pre- Algebra Classes:
It seemed that I administered the ISTEP prep pretty fluently today in my Pre-Algebra Classes. In my 1st hour class I was able to even sort of teach about using the formula of the area of a triangle to find the area of a trapezoid. It was pretty fun. In my 5th Period class I had barely enough time to explain the Countdown to ISTEP worksheet, and the next thing I knew I had run out of time.
Algebra Classes:
These classes are tough during a 2 hour delay. One class is the normal hour long, while the other class is a pathetic 29 minutes. Because of this, I decided to give back the class that had their normal time their 10 minutes of reading at the beginning of class. To remind anyone of why we normally give the students of the 4th period time to read is because they have an hour long class, when most classes are 50 minutes. This gives students a chance to read the AR books, where they get a grade and points based on their test scores of reading comprehension of a book.
Back to the classes though, where I was able to help students better understand their ability with factoring polynomials. They all knew what they were doing, just didn't know how to recognize the easy ones, so when they thought they had to use the box method for bigger numbers, they really only had to use the factoring strategy for the squaring of binomials. This, I think helped them out, and I decided to have them hand in their old work and assign a new worksheet. This one had a small, simple amount of factoring problems, and it seemed like the ease of these problems relieved their stress a little bit. The first worksheet I gave them had many difficult problems with large common factors and large numbers in general. I figured if they learned how to solve these harder problems, it will be easier for them to solve easier problems in the future. I mentioned that I will be having a quiz over this material tomorrow. They didn't look too excited about it, but at least I gave them some kind of warning before I just threw it at them, in case they wanted to review anything.
Thursday and Friday Feb. 17th & 18th
I decided to sum these two days up into one post. Mainly because I have missed multiple posts and am falling behind.
Thursday:
This day was pretty normal, for the most part. It was yet another day where many teachers we missing due to recent textbook adoption meetings. The school was short on substitute teachers, which spells disaster.
In my Pre-Algebra classes, nothing extraordinary happened. Honestly, I don't remember a whole lot from Thursday, especially anything that was significant. I do remember that I didn't explain something from the ISTEP countdown very well. I guess this is something I will work on, explaining topics that I am certain students have had before. Really, most of the students hadn't worked on these problems. The students who had my Accelerated Math class were the only ones who had any solid experience with percent change and difference because of all the multiple choice problems they have had in that class.
In my Algebra classes, we went over some more factoring polynomials. It is really frustrating when your students don't get a topic after multiple days of teaching, and re-teaching the same exact concepts. I think the most trouble they are having is recognizing what kind of polynomial they are dealing with. Instead of thinking something cannot be factored any further, they assumed they didn't know what they were doing, and gave up on the whole assignment. It seemed, as a whole, my second Algebra class got it, which is a little surprising because I was told that the "smarter" students, based on test scores, were placed in the first, or 4th period class. I have come to learn, there really wasn't much of any planning when it came to the school's scheduling, and that the students were simply placed the way they were due to the classes they were all taking. One thing that did happen that was kind of cool, non math related, was being asked to attend a free "concert" that was being performed by the school show choir called the Titations (after the Temptations, clever name if you ask me.) I said I wasn't sure if I could attend an entire concert, and was told that it was only a half hour. I told them I probably couldn't go so they wouldn't get their hopes up.
Well I went anyways, and was pleasantly surprised by the talent that some of my students had in both singing and dancing. It was also kind of funny to hear the guys in the show choir trying to sound all manly and pull out deeper voices than their range would allow them. Either way, the concert was entertaining, and I found out I had one of my student's brothers when I was participating in my practicum class over at Muncie Central. Ran into some of the parent's of my students and found out that many of them did not get the letter I sent out with the kids as an attempt to let the teachers know that I am even there. I didn't like knowing that many parents had no idea I was there, or even who I was.
It's really nice to leave something like that and get resounding thank you's and hearing how nice of a teacher I am. I attend things like that so that I can show my students how much I truly care. I want them to succeed. If I have to, I can be some type of father figure, or someone they can turn to in time of need. I want them to understand that I am not some person that only administers grades to them. I want them to know that I do care, not only about their grades, but about them as people, and going to events like this lets me show them.
Friday: The Dr. Bremigan Visit.
The day had come for my other, topic focused, university supervisor to come and visit my classroom. I had mentioned to her that I was going to be focusing on a review game in my Algebra classes, which is the class she was going visit. Basically this review game, which I pawned off of my practicum teacher in the high school, is a review game where you split the class into groups based on achievement level, or based on how strong of students you think they are, with a mixture of stronger and weaker students in each group. This, as it turns out, is an extremely tough thing to do, as I had messed up because some students which I thought were weaker just seemed so because they never talked or raised their hand in class. Anyway, after you split them up each team gets a white board and a marker. I give them a question that we have been working on. I give them a number of 30 second music clips from popular songs from both theirs, mine, and before my generation of music. They get points for the correct answer, and minimal bonus points for getting artists and songs right. This turned out very well for these two classes and makes me wonder if, or how it might work in my Pre-Algebra classes, where it seems no matter what I do, it's boring or stupid. Back to Algebra classes, where I was being observed. In the corner of my eye, I could see her and my cooperating teacher talking. I assume it was all good things, and so I hope. Anyways, both classes seemed to go well and I offered suckers to the winning and last place groups.
At the beginning of my last class I was asked by a few girls in the show choir, from the event I had attended yesterday, if I would go with them, on the bus, to their choir competition that night. I simply said "I don't think that would be a good idea." One girl responded promptly with "Well I could bring a blanket and you could spend the night, and we could all have a picnic." Yeah...I just stood there with a surprised look and slowly started walking the other way, as I was I heard "imagine having a picnic with Mr. K." I'm just glad I approached this the best way that I know how, with really no out right response but more of an avoidance of the question, similar to LeBron James and his avoidance of the media after he lost the Eastern Conference Finals to the Orlando Magic in 2009. Except I wasn't a sore loser, just someone who didn't know how to answer a situation.
At the end of the day, I would say I am making some sort of difference in the lives of my students, whether it be a bonding experience, or simply how their educational life may pan out. Either way, I hope my influence is nothing but positive. Hooray for this 3 day weekend, maybe I will catch up on much material, like both my digital and professional portfolio.
Thursday:
This day was pretty normal, for the most part. It was yet another day where many teachers we missing due to recent textbook adoption meetings. The school was short on substitute teachers, which spells disaster.
In my Pre-Algebra classes, nothing extraordinary happened. Honestly, I don't remember a whole lot from Thursday, especially anything that was significant. I do remember that I didn't explain something from the ISTEP countdown very well. I guess this is something I will work on, explaining topics that I am certain students have had before. Really, most of the students hadn't worked on these problems. The students who had my Accelerated Math class were the only ones who had any solid experience with percent change and difference because of all the multiple choice problems they have had in that class.
In my Algebra classes, we went over some more factoring polynomials. It is really frustrating when your students don't get a topic after multiple days of teaching, and re-teaching the same exact concepts. I think the most trouble they are having is recognizing what kind of polynomial they are dealing with. Instead of thinking something cannot be factored any further, they assumed they didn't know what they were doing, and gave up on the whole assignment. It seemed, as a whole, my second Algebra class got it, which is a little surprising because I was told that the "smarter" students, based on test scores, were placed in the first, or 4th period class. I have come to learn, there really wasn't much of any planning when it came to the school's scheduling, and that the students were simply placed the way they were due to the classes they were all taking. One thing that did happen that was kind of cool, non math related, was being asked to attend a free "concert" that was being performed by the school show choir called the Titations (after the Temptations, clever name if you ask me.) I said I wasn't sure if I could attend an entire concert, and was told that it was only a half hour. I told them I probably couldn't go so they wouldn't get their hopes up.
Well I went anyways, and was pleasantly surprised by the talent that some of my students had in both singing and dancing. It was also kind of funny to hear the guys in the show choir trying to sound all manly and pull out deeper voices than their range would allow them. Either way, the concert was entertaining, and I found out I had one of my student's brothers when I was participating in my practicum class over at Muncie Central. Ran into some of the parent's of my students and found out that many of them did not get the letter I sent out with the kids as an attempt to let the teachers know that I am even there. I didn't like knowing that many parents had no idea I was there, or even who I was.
It's really nice to leave something like that and get resounding thank you's and hearing how nice of a teacher I am. I attend things like that so that I can show my students how much I truly care. I want them to succeed. If I have to, I can be some type of father figure, or someone they can turn to in time of need. I want them to understand that I am not some person that only administers grades to them. I want them to know that I do care, not only about their grades, but about them as people, and going to events like this lets me show them.
Friday: The Dr. Bremigan Visit.
The day had come for my other, topic focused, university supervisor to come and visit my classroom. I had mentioned to her that I was going to be focusing on a review game in my Algebra classes, which is the class she was going visit. Basically this review game, which I pawned off of my practicum teacher in the high school, is a review game where you split the class into groups based on achievement level, or based on how strong of students you think they are, with a mixture of stronger and weaker students in each group. This, as it turns out, is an extremely tough thing to do, as I had messed up because some students which I thought were weaker just seemed so because they never talked or raised their hand in class. Anyway, after you split them up each team gets a white board and a marker. I give them a question that we have been working on. I give them a number of 30 second music clips from popular songs from both theirs, mine, and before my generation of music. They get points for the correct answer, and minimal bonus points for getting artists and songs right. This turned out very well for these two classes and makes me wonder if, or how it might work in my Pre-Algebra classes, where it seems no matter what I do, it's boring or stupid. Back to Algebra classes, where I was being observed. In the corner of my eye, I could see her and my cooperating teacher talking. I assume it was all good things, and so I hope. Anyways, both classes seemed to go well and I offered suckers to the winning and last place groups.
At the beginning of my last class I was asked by a few girls in the show choir, from the event I had attended yesterday, if I would go with them, on the bus, to their choir competition that night. I simply said "I don't think that would be a good idea." One girl responded promptly with "Well I could bring a blanket and you could spend the night, and we could all have a picnic." Yeah...I just stood there with a surprised look and slowly started walking the other way, as I was I heard "imagine having a picnic with Mr. K." I'm just glad I approached this the best way that I know how, with really no out right response but more of an avoidance of the question, similar to LeBron James and his avoidance of the media after he lost the Eastern Conference Finals to the Orlando Magic in 2009. Except I wasn't a sore loser, just someone who didn't know how to answer a situation.
At the end of the day, I would say I am making some sort of difference in the lives of my students, whether it be a bonding experience, or simply how their educational life may pan out. Either way, I hope my influence is nothing but positive. Hooray for this 3 day weekend, maybe I will catch up on much material, like both my digital and professional portfolio.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Feb. 16th
If I were to pick a day of the week that looks promising, it is always Wednesday. Wednesday is that kind of day that feels like you have gotten through the rough part of the week, and it is also the day were you are thinking only two more days until the upcoming three day weekend. (in this case). Either way you look at it, it seems to be a great day.
Before school, every Wednesday, and including this one, we have our weekly PLC meeting. To this day, I am still unsure exactly what PLC stands for, but I am pretty sure it's not that important to know the actual acronym. This meeting starts at 7:45 and ends at about 8 or 8:05. On this day school starts 5 minutes late, and lets out 5 minutes early. To be honest with you, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but that is how it goes, so I just roll with it.
For my Pre-Algebra classes, it was day two of my Pythagorean Theorem activity. Honestly, most groups couldn't even get it done at the end of this class since the Countdown to ISTEP activities took so long. It seemed that the students seemed to like the activity a lot, even though some took shortcuts and rounded numbers to the nearest whole, even after I shared with them to use decimals and the dashes on the ruler besides the ones used for just the whole numbers. Either way I thought it was somewhat of a successful activity. There were a few groups in each class that did absolutely nothing. This allows me to understand what people cannot be in groups together when they are doing a group activity. My original plan was to have both classes share what they learned, but because of time restraints, I was only able to do this partially with my 5th period class. I had the two groups that finished make a list of objects they see in real world situations, to share tomorrow with the rest of the class how relevant learning about shapes in and how shapes influence our world. This seemed like a great idea and they liked the sound that they were the only ones with this task.
Algebra class was yet another day of Factoring Polynomials. This day, in both classes, the ISTEP activity went fairly quickly, and I spent the entire rest of class doing examples and explaining how a polynomial is factored. It was both very boring and very methodical. One fun thing that happened during the day, though, was the fact that I wore the tie that was given to me on Valentine's Day. The students really seemed to like that fact that I was wearing something that was given to me by one of their classmates. Everyone was glad, especially the girl who gave it to me. She was much more responsive today that she has been in the past. I think this let me know that the stuedents think I am someone that cares about them and the gifts they might give to me throughout now and the 1st week of may. Overall, I would say the day was kind of methodical and boring, nothing really too exciting happened to me or happened in general. I did, however, sub in for another teacher's study hall during one of my prep periods. This was kind of fun and interactive. It was a computer classroom, and when students are there normally, they are allowed to play games on the computer as long as they have completed whatever homework they had brought with them. I met a few new students and they seemed to gain a liking to me. It is nice to just sit down and interact with students instead of preaching to them about math every once in a while.
After school, a few students had asked me if I could stay after to help them with factoring polynomials, and of course I obliged. Two students stayed and I helped them until about 4 o'clock. It was nice to sort of bond with these two students, because it seems like I pick on them sometimes in the classroom. They asked me personal questions that, of course, I could not answer, but came up with answers that were appropriate and reasonable. Its a great day for weather, so I am going outside for a little bit today.
Before school, every Wednesday, and including this one, we have our weekly PLC meeting. To this day, I am still unsure exactly what PLC stands for, but I am pretty sure it's not that important to know the actual acronym. This meeting starts at 7:45 and ends at about 8 or 8:05. On this day school starts 5 minutes late, and lets out 5 minutes early. To be honest with you, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but that is how it goes, so I just roll with it.
For my Pre-Algebra classes, it was day two of my Pythagorean Theorem activity. Honestly, most groups couldn't even get it done at the end of this class since the Countdown to ISTEP activities took so long. It seemed that the students seemed to like the activity a lot, even though some took shortcuts and rounded numbers to the nearest whole, even after I shared with them to use decimals and the dashes on the ruler besides the ones used for just the whole numbers. Either way I thought it was somewhat of a successful activity. There were a few groups in each class that did absolutely nothing. This allows me to understand what people cannot be in groups together when they are doing a group activity. My original plan was to have both classes share what they learned, but because of time restraints, I was only able to do this partially with my 5th period class. I had the two groups that finished make a list of objects they see in real world situations, to share tomorrow with the rest of the class how relevant learning about shapes in and how shapes influence our world. This seemed like a great idea and they liked the sound that they were the only ones with this task.
Algebra class was yet another day of Factoring Polynomials. This day, in both classes, the ISTEP activity went fairly quickly, and I spent the entire rest of class doing examples and explaining how a polynomial is factored. It was both very boring and very methodical. One fun thing that happened during the day, though, was the fact that I wore the tie that was given to me on Valentine's Day. The students really seemed to like that fact that I was wearing something that was given to me by one of their classmates. Everyone was glad, especially the girl who gave it to me. She was much more responsive today that she has been in the past. I think this let me know that the stuedents think I am someone that cares about them and the gifts they might give to me throughout now and the 1st week of may. Overall, I would say the day was kind of methodical and boring, nothing really too exciting happened to me or happened in general. I did, however, sub in for another teacher's study hall during one of my prep periods. This was kind of fun and interactive. It was a computer classroom, and when students are there normally, they are allowed to play games on the computer as long as they have completed whatever homework they had brought with them. I met a few new students and they seemed to gain a liking to me. It is nice to just sit down and interact with students instead of preaching to them about math every once in a while.
After school, a few students had asked me if I could stay after to help them with factoring polynomials, and of course I obliged. Two students stayed and I helped them until about 4 o'clock. It was nice to sort of bond with these two students, because it seems like I pick on them sometimes in the classroom. They asked me personal questions that, of course, I could not answer, but came up with answers that were appropriate and reasonable. Its a great day for weather, so I am going outside for a little bit today.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Feb. 15th
Fwew, got that rough holiday out of the way and onto another full day of teaching.
In my two Pre-Algebra classes I was teaching the Pythagorean Theorem, for both the ISTEP Countdown as well as my regular teaching class. This helped, instead of spending 25 minutes for the countdown and then trying to teach a regular class, I was able to combine the two and create one lesson. In 1st hour, I taught like I would any other class. After class I realized I had a lot of lost students. I talked with my cooperating teacher, and he had mentioned that I needed to slow down for this class. What I think is a pretty normal pace for students that age is still a little fast for this class to comprehend, as a whole. Some students got what I was talking about almost immediately, but as a whole I had moved too fast. He gave me suggestions for my other class and they worked perfectly. The other class moved much smoother and it seemed all the students knew how to use the theorem, but had trouble with the actual algebraic process to solve for the missing side.
My two algebra classes didn't go as smoothly as I would have liked. 4th period had trouble with the countdown assignment, so that cut into their time. In fact, so did 7th period. Most were still having trouble with factoring in general so I decided to give them a large "review" worksheet of factoring polynomials. Well, it turned out that none of the students could recognize what to look for. I tried assigning them just the evens to get them thinking. I wasn't going to collect it for homework, considering both only had enough time for one or two problems to even look at. Overall it seemed like there was a lot of work to behold on factoring polynomials.
I was asked constantly this day, by the girls, either where my new tie was, or if I had a good Valentines Day, followed by that look with the raising eyebrows over and over.....I ignored those questions basically...especially ones with the eyebrow raising.
In my two Pre-Algebra classes I was teaching the Pythagorean Theorem, for both the ISTEP Countdown as well as my regular teaching class. This helped, instead of spending 25 minutes for the countdown and then trying to teach a regular class, I was able to combine the two and create one lesson. In 1st hour, I taught like I would any other class. After class I realized I had a lot of lost students. I talked with my cooperating teacher, and he had mentioned that I needed to slow down for this class. What I think is a pretty normal pace for students that age is still a little fast for this class to comprehend, as a whole. Some students got what I was talking about almost immediately, but as a whole I had moved too fast. He gave me suggestions for my other class and they worked perfectly. The other class moved much smoother and it seemed all the students knew how to use the theorem, but had trouble with the actual algebraic process to solve for the missing side.
My two algebra classes didn't go as smoothly as I would have liked. 4th period had trouble with the countdown assignment, so that cut into their time. In fact, so did 7th period. Most were still having trouble with factoring in general so I decided to give them a large "review" worksheet of factoring polynomials. Well, it turned out that none of the students could recognize what to look for. I tried assigning them just the evens to get them thinking. I wasn't going to collect it for homework, considering both only had enough time for one or two problems to even look at. Overall it seemed like there was a lot of work to behold on factoring polynomials.
I was asked constantly this day, by the girls, either where my new tie was, or if I had a good Valentines Day, followed by that look with the raising eyebrows over and over.....I ignored those questions basically...especially ones with the eyebrow raising.
Feb. 14th
The one day just about every man on the planet has either paid for chocolate or flowers for a girl, or guy, that he loves or has feelings for, Valentines Day! I was slightly dreading this day, on the other hand. Not because I don't have a whole lot of money to spend on my girlfriend, but because I was certain I was going to get some weird Valentines or something throughout the school day. Not only was it this fun, yet nerve-wrecking, holiday, it was also the first day I was taking over all the classes at one time. Just another reason to be a little nervous throughout the day.
Countdown to ISTEP today was a simple page on completing problems with the use of order of operations. All my classes must complete the countdown work, however, my honors Algebra classes usually take little to no time to complete this task.
1st period class roles around and I was teaching the students how to approximate the square root of a number that is not a square root. On Friday, I had given both of my Pre-Algebra classes, including this one, a multiplication chart up to 25. I showed them how they could use this when trying to decide when the square root they were approximating by which perfect squares it was closest to. Believe me, it is a lot easier to explain it up in front of a classroom than it is to try and explain what I did. While I was teaching I noticed a few students nodding off and sleeping, and it's not because they were tired, but simply because they didn't want to listen. I attempted to wake up or keep the students' heads up and paying attention, but my efforts failed. As usual, once I gave them their assignment, they were clueless as to how they were to complete such a task. Today I helped them, because I give every person the benefit of the doubt. At the end of this class, I handed out Valentines that were simply from Mr. Kerwin, with no specific student getting any certain Valentine. I was a little nervous handing out valentines, thinking students could think the wrong thing if their valentine had a certain phrase on it, so I was advised by a good friend to hand them out "blindly" and give them to all my students with the only thing I write is From: Mr. Kerwin. This worked superbly, my students in first hour loved the fact that they got valentines, since it seemed like many students don't get valentines on this lovers' holiday.
My next teaching class was my 4th hour Algebra I class. We were still working on factoring Polynomials. After the quick 10 minute Countdown to ISTEP, we were right into questions they had about Friday's assignment: factoring using the box method. Mostly there were some questions about the syntax of the activity packet itself, but once I cleared this up, there was really only one question about one of the problems in this packet. I went over it and explained how to factor it, and how it can be related to the previous style of factoring we had done. Today's new task was factoring Special Case polynomials. It seemed to go pretty well, they were just having a hard time determining when this little shortcut would be used, or, more often than not, how to recognize it. I cleared this up in class and gave them their assignment. In this class, I received a Garfield tie as a Valentine's Day gift from a few girl students, or so it seemed. I thought it was a nice and cute gesture. When another student asked "Why a tie?" The two girls that physically gave me the tie said it was because my university supervisor said to where a tie. I handed out my valentines and once again the students were enthused and excited to get my funny and cute Disney, Spongebob, and Cars valentines.
5th period roles around and this class seems to be my class that is going to be the most challenging, discipline wise. It's right after lunch and students tend to be a little more rambunctious, and hard to keep focused. This is my other Pre-Algebra class and they were slightly farther ahead than my other class. Rather than move on I decided to enrich this class on approximating square roots, moving into their books for more problems on estimating square roots. This class flew by, they seemed to be working with me extremely well, this looks bright and fun in the future. There are a handful of students that seem they will ruin it for the rest of the class, but me and my teacher seem to have a discipline plan for that kind of behavior. Handed out my valentines and later found a few ripped on the ground. A little disappointing because I went out of my way to be nice to them.
My last class of the day is another Algebra class. They seem to have more questions about factoring using the box method than my other class seemed to have. Well after I answered quite a few questions about the box method I collected the activity and moved on to special cases. It seemed that this class was having tons of trouble with factoring polynomials. Well usually, I allow most of my classes to work with partners or groups to help eachother with homework. I decided to grade the activity packet, for both a completion and correctness grade. After I saw the effort put forth by this class, I just took a correctness grade. Most of the students had not even put in the answers that I had gone over in class. The students who usually pay attention and do well did fine. It was those "on the fence" students who didn't put forth any effort. I was pretty upset after their class was over. Even on this day, I got pretty mad because students kept interrupting class by talking or making unnecessary comments.
Overall it was a fun and exciting day. Thus started a new chapter in the life of Joe Kerwin.
Countdown to ISTEP today was a simple page on completing problems with the use of order of operations. All my classes must complete the countdown work, however, my honors Algebra classes usually take little to no time to complete this task.
1st period class roles around and I was teaching the students how to approximate the square root of a number that is not a square root. On Friday, I had given both of my Pre-Algebra classes, including this one, a multiplication chart up to 25. I showed them how they could use this when trying to decide when the square root they were approximating by which perfect squares it was closest to. Believe me, it is a lot easier to explain it up in front of a classroom than it is to try and explain what I did. While I was teaching I noticed a few students nodding off and sleeping, and it's not because they were tired, but simply because they didn't want to listen. I attempted to wake up or keep the students' heads up and paying attention, but my efforts failed. As usual, once I gave them their assignment, they were clueless as to how they were to complete such a task. Today I helped them, because I give every person the benefit of the doubt. At the end of this class, I handed out Valentines that were simply from Mr. Kerwin, with no specific student getting any certain Valentine. I was a little nervous handing out valentines, thinking students could think the wrong thing if their valentine had a certain phrase on it, so I was advised by a good friend to hand them out "blindly" and give them to all my students with the only thing I write is From: Mr. Kerwin. This worked superbly, my students in first hour loved the fact that they got valentines, since it seemed like many students don't get valentines on this lovers' holiday.
My next teaching class was my 4th hour Algebra I class. We were still working on factoring Polynomials. After the quick 10 minute Countdown to ISTEP, we were right into questions they had about Friday's assignment: factoring using the box method. Mostly there were some questions about the syntax of the activity packet itself, but once I cleared this up, there was really only one question about one of the problems in this packet. I went over it and explained how to factor it, and how it can be related to the previous style of factoring we had done. Today's new task was factoring Special Case polynomials. It seemed to go pretty well, they were just having a hard time determining when this little shortcut would be used, or, more often than not, how to recognize it. I cleared this up in class and gave them their assignment. In this class, I received a Garfield tie as a Valentine's Day gift from a few girl students, or so it seemed. I thought it was a nice and cute gesture. When another student asked "Why a tie?" The two girls that physically gave me the tie said it was because my university supervisor said to where a tie. I handed out my valentines and once again the students were enthused and excited to get my funny and cute Disney, Spongebob, and Cars valentines.
5th period roles around and this class seems to be my class that is going to be the most challenging, discipline wise. It's right after lunch and students tend to be a little more rambunctious, and hard to keep focused. This is my other Pre-Algebra class and they were slightly farther ahead than my other class. Rather than move on I decided to enrich this class on approximating square roots, moving into their books for more problems on estimating square roots. This class flew by, they seemed to be working with me extremely well, this looks bright and fun in the future. There are a handful of students that seem they will ruin it for the rest of the class, but me and my teacher seem to have a discipline plan for that kind of behavior. Handed out my valentines and later found a few ripped on the ground. A little disappointing because I went out of my way to be nice to them.
My last class of the day is another Algebra class. They seem to have more questions about factoring using the box method than my other class seemed to have. Well after I answered quite a few questions about the box method I collected the activity and moved on to special cases. It seemed that this class was having tons of trouble with factoring polynomials. Well usually, I allow most of my classes to work with partners or groups to help eachother with homework. I decided to grade the activity packet, for both a completion and correctness grade. After I saw the effort put forth by this class, I just took a correctness grade. Most of the students had not even put in the answers that I had gone over in class. The students who usually pay attention and do well did fine. It was those "on the fence" students who didn't put forth any effort. I was pretty upset after their class was over. Even on this day, I got pretty mad because students kept interrupting class by talking or making unnecessary comments.
Overall it was a fun and exciting day. Thus started a new chapter in the life of Joe Kerwin.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Feb. 11th
Ahhh....finally, I had an entire school day with class periods that were sort of normal. I say sort of because of the countdown to ISTEP that was at the beginning of each class. The one downfall to this countdown is that it should only last about 20 minutes each class, allowing for teachers to conduct their normal class after all is said and done. In teaching nothing goes as planned, and in my first class the activity that should,or was planned to, take only 20 minutes ended up taking up the entire 50 minute class period. Luckily the other Pre-Algebra class finished the task in about 35 minutes, leaving only a few short minutes to work on the days work of approximating square roots. My accelerated math class went exceptionally well today since grades were being sent home to parents today.
When it came to the Algebra classes that I had taken over, the countdown to ISTEP task went quite well and took a mere 10 minutes at the start of class. The countdown for today was the use of Order of Operations and the distributive property. It was just a few problems that involved variable expressions and equations. The lesson I was teaching that day was factoring trinomials where the lead coefficient is not 1. If you don't know what that is, look it up online. I explained to them the process with using the box method. At first all was going well, and then all hell broke loose. It seemed that they got completely lost in the middle of my explanation. During my explanation, I even mentioned important things about the box method and how it works. Luckily I was prepared, mentally, to overcome such a struggle and did so with ease. I think the problem was the lack of examples or the fact the process was different than the process we had used before. The "activity" I gave them was something written by someone else but came with 8 steps on how to factor a quadratic trinomial using the box method and a few exploration problems to complete. My original plan would have had them finish that in class and try a few problems out of the text book. Like I said before, and you'll hear it a million times from any teacher, nothing ever goes as planned, and this packet ended up taking longer than expected so the assignment turned out to be just the worksheet. One mistake I made today was something I learned from my 6th grade Social Studies teacher. "Never assume, because it makes an ass out of u and me." Now this wasn't my quote since I censored it a bit and used the word butt instead. I realized after I had said it, that I probably shouldn't have said it, but it's in the past now. I am just hoping the principal's daughter in that class doesn't tell her father what she learned about assume.
In my last two classes, things went smoothly. The ISTEP countdown took only about 35 minutes to complete in 5th hour, allowing some time and instruction for the use of approximating square roots that aren't perfect squares. It seemed the students understood how to approximate the decimal point. I helped one student and he came up with an answer for the square root of 60, and he decided it would be 7.7. In this exercise we were only approximating to the tenths place. I asked him if he thought his answer made sense, and he wasn't sure what to think. I showed him on a calculator what the square root of 60 was. It obviously isn't as simple as 7.7, but it helped him understand that his answer isn't going to be perfect, but it's going to be close. 7th hour seems to be my most interactive and joyful class. Yesterday, as a joke, a girl snapped her fingers toward me in a Z motion. I'm almost positive she was doing it to her friend, but I asked her "Did you just Z me?" I like to joke around with the kids, it loosens things up. I wish I had more of a mean side, but I guess that will come in time. Anyways, today she came in and went "Mr. Kerwin!" and pulled it off again, completely joking and I was having a good time with it.
Like I said yesterday, I inadvertently made fun of a girl's accessories, so today, she got me back with a few words of her own. "Mr. Kerwin, your shirt looks like an old man would wear it." I know she was kidding, and I laughed about it, because she knows that I wasn't purposely trying to hurt her feelings the day before, or at least I thought.
I've been student teaching for 5 weeks already, and it seems like I have barely been there. I would like to say I am ready for the real thing, but I cannot even describe to you how much work a teacher in the Muncie School Corporation does unless you see it for yourself. Since Muncie is a "failing" school, or a school that has poor standardized test scores, teachers are forced to follow strict curriculum and an even stricter enrichment and remediation process to get students to pass ISTEP. It seems like everything is all about the tests, and the the corporation does not care about the students, but rather how much funding they can get the following year.
Goal(s): My goal is to eventually get to the point where I can be completely comfortable in front of all the classes. The Algebra classes were easy to step in front of since most of those students are not discipline problems.
I also hope that I am not a teacher that assigns homework on Fridays. I know this probably isn't the best idea during student teaching or even my first year of teaching. I think right now I am going to stick with small assignments over the weekend, because I believe the weekend is for family and fun, and not for work.
Favorite class?: If I were to choose a favorite class (I feel like a parent that refuses to pick a favorite son or daughter) I would pick either my 2nd hour class or my 7th hour class. I love the one-on-one interaction I can give the students in the Accelerated Math class, and I love the interaction I have with the 7th period.
When it came to the Algebra classes that I had taken over, the countdown to ISTEP task went quite well and took a mere 10 minutes at the start of class. The countdown for today was the use of Order of Operations and the distributive property. It was just a few problems that involved variable expressions and equations. The lesson I was teaching that day was factoring trinomials where the lead coefficient is not 1. If you don't know what that is, look it up online. I explained to them the process with using the box method. At first all was going well, and then all hell broke loose. It seemed that they got completely lost in the middle of my explanation. During my explanation, I even mentioned important things about the box method and how it works. Luckily I was prepared, mentally, to overcome such a struggle and did so with ease. I think the problem was the lack of examples or the fact the process was different than the process we had used before. The "activity" I gave them was something written by someone else but came with 8 steps on how to factor a quadratic trinomial using the box method and a few exploration problems to complete. My original plan would have had them finish that in class and try a few problems out of the text book. Like I said before, and you'll hear it a million times from any teacher, nothing ever goes as planned, and this packet ended up taking longer than expected so the assignment turned out to be just the worksheet. One mistake I made today was something I learned from my 6th grade Social Studies teacher. "Never assume, because it makes an ass out of u and me." Now this wasn't my quote since I censored it a bit and used the word butt instead. I realized after I had said it, that I probably shouldn't have said it, but it's in the past now. I am just hoping the principal's daughter in that class doesn't tell her father what she learned about assume.
In my last two classes, things went smoothly. The ISTEP countdown took only about 35 minutes to complete in 5th hour, allowing some time and instruction for the use of approximating square roots that aren't perfect squares. It seemed the students understood how to approximate the decimal point. I helped one student and he came up with an answer for the square root of 60, and he decided it would be 7.7. In this exercise we were only approximating to the tenths place. I asked him if he thought his answer made sense, and he wasn't sure what to think. I showed him on a calculator what the square root of 60 was. It obviously isn't as simple as 7.7, but it helped him understand that his answer isn't going to be perfect, but it's going to be close. 7th hour seems to be my most interactive and joyful class. Yesterday, as a joke, a girl snapped her fingers toward me in a Z motion. I'm almost positive she was doing it to her friend, but I asked her "Did you just Z me?" I like to joke around with the kids, it loosens things up. I wish I had more of a mean side, but I guess that will come in time. Anyways, today she came in and went "Mr. Kerwin!" and pulled it off again, completely joking and I was having a good time with it.
Like I said yesterday, I inadvertently made fun of a girl's accessories, so today, she got me back with a few words of her own. "Mr. Kerwin, your shirt looks like an old man would wear it." I know she was kidding, and I laughed about it, because she knows that I wasn't purposely trying to hurt her feelings the day before, or at least I thought.
I've been student teaching for 5 weeks already, and it seems like I have barely been there. I would like to say I am ready for the real thing, but I cannot even describe to you how much work a teacher in the Muncie School Corporation does unless you see it for yourself. Since Muncie is a "failing" school, or a school that has poor standardized test scores, teachers are forced to follow strict curriculum and an even stricter enrichment and remediation process to get students to pass ISTEP. It seems like everything is all about the tests, and the the corporation does not care about the students, but rather how much funding they can get the following year.
Goal(s): My goal is to eventually get to the point where I can be completely comfortable in front of all the classes. The Algebra classes were easy to step in front of since most of those students are not discipline problems.
I also hope that I am not a teacher that assigns homework on Fridays. I know this probably isn't the best idea during student teaching or even my first year of teaching. I think right now I am going to stick with small assignments over the weekend, because I believe the weekend is for family and fun, and not for work.
Favorite class?: If I were to choose a favorite class (I feel like a parent that refuses to pick a favorite son or daughter) I would pick either my 2nd hour class or my 7th hour class. I love the one-on-one interaction I can give the students in the Accelerated Math class, and I love the interaction I have with the 7th period.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Feb. 10th
I know I missed yesterday, but I decided just to talk about today instead. Today was the first day that begun the countdown to ISTEP. For those of you who don't know what countdown to ISTEP is, it's basically a 20 minute lesson at the start of every class to either remediate or enrich topics that are on the upcoming ISTEP. This goes on for the 11 school days before ISTEP begins.
Not only was it the beginning of countdown to ISTEP, but it was also another 2 hour delay thanks to the frigid morning temperature of -6 degrees Fahrenheit. With this in mind, I only had 1 1/2 classes where I could do anything besides ISTEP enrichment. To me this kind of stinks, but at the same time, the one class I do get to teach "normal" is my 4th period Algebra class. After the ISTEP lesson on using the more recent answer grids and order of operations, it was on to my extension on factoring trinomials. Today was factoring trinomials with multiple variables. Honestly just an extension, and the students were thinking too hard and making it more complicated than it really was. This class was a little disruptive and had a very short attention span. I also was told that I have a very boring voice when I teach, and that I should work on being more exciting. To be honest, that kind of hurt my feelings, but I didn't let it show. I always thought i was an energetic type of person, but then again, some of the topics I am doing right now aren't the most exciting or fun topics to speak about. Other than that, the students seemed to get it pretty well and I was confident they were ready to move onto factoring quadratic trinomials where the lead coefficient is greater than 1.
The one main concern I have with this countdown to ISTEP, is that my lessons have to be more precise and homework assignments shorter so that it is a fair enough lesson for the students to be engaged and learn as well as have enough time to do homework. I am excited to eventually take over all the classes, but I don't look forward to teach during this ISTEP countdown.
Not only was it the beginning of countdown to ISTEP, but it was also another 2 hour delay thanks to the frigid morning temperature of -6 degrees Fahrenheit. With this in mind, I only had 1 1/2 classes where I could do anything besides ISTEP enrichment. To me this kind of stinks, but at the same time, the one class I do get to teach "normal" is my 4th period Algebra class. After the ISTEP lesson on using the more recent answer grids and order of operations, it was on to my extension on factoring trinomials. Today was factoring trinomials with multiple variables. Honestly just an extension, and the students were thinking too hard and making it more complicated than it really was. This class was a little disruptive and had a very short attention span. I also was told that I have a very boring voice when I teach, and that I should work on being more exciting. To be honest, that kind of hurt my feelings, but I didn't let it show. I always thought i was an energetic type of person, but then again, some of the topics I am doing right now aren't the most exciting or fun topics to speak about. Other than that, the students seemed to get it pretty well and I was confident they were ready to move onto factoring quadratic trinomials where the lead coefficient is greater than 1.
The one main concern I have with this countdown to ISTEP, is that my lessons have to be more precise and homework assignments shorter so that it is a fair enough lesson for the students to be engaged and learn as well as have enough time to do homework. I am excited to eventually take over all the classes, but I don't look forward to teach during this ISTEP countdown.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Feb. 8th
Today was yet another two-hour delay. Sure I didn't mind the days off or the two hour delays when they first started happening, but it's really hard to get anything done in class when you only have 29 minutes to teach and work. Right now my actual teaching time is cut down to about 15-20 minutes. So for my classes that only have 29 minutes, which is all but 1st and 4th on two-hour delay days, they only have a matter of minutes to work on homework. When it comes to homework I don't believe that any child should spend a lot of time working at home to complete it. While it is called homework, I think that what you cannot finish in class, you then take home. Hopefully students get out what they would get out of the assignment whether or not they do 30 or 15 problems.
Anyways, two hour delay days are a big odd, since your class periods go 1 4 2 3 5 6 7. 1st hour is about 40 minutes, while 4th is the the full 60, and the rest are a mere 29 minutes. What's nice about the 29 minute classes is it seems to make the day go by quickly. Then again, that's the bad part about it, because it moves too quickly. I am rearing up for this countdown to ISTEP starting Thursday. According to my cooperating teacher, its supposed to be a 10-20 minute review of what is on the upcoming ISTEP test, for 10 DAYS!! It is not something I am looking forward to. Today, which I most regretfully forgot, was hat day, where students get to wear hats if they donated a dollar for a fundraiser. I saw Kermit the Frog hats, Eoore (sp?) hats, and even Panda bear winter caps. I can tell some students have taken fond of me, especially when one student who rarely talks comes up to me to show me their new shirt. "Mr. Kerwin, check out my new shirt, my Dad got it for me!" Well if you saw this shirt, it would remind you of the Wolf Pack from professional Wrestling in the 90's, Dwight Schrute's epic wolf shirt from the office, or the Wolf Pack shirt from that weird guy on The Hangover. It was a wolf with a background of a wolf howling in front of a moon. Honestly, not my taste, but I thought I would say that I liked it anyway.
My Pre-algebra classes are still in control of my cooperating teacher, and hopefully I will be taking over everything as of next week. I never thought grading papers would be this big of a hassle, and is the only thing I don't look forward to over the course of the next few months. In my algebra classes, where I taught the polynomial division by monomials, is where I enjoyed most of my day. My first, or 4th hour Algebra class gets me the full time. I reviewed some of their previous days homework, and of course they had me do the longest and most drawn out problem on their homework, but I guess that's what I deserve for assigning such a problem. That took longer than I had expected but quickly moved on to dividing with a monomial. They understood the concept and seemd to get what I was talking about. A group of students that always talks a lot, yet turns in their work on time, started asking me non-related questions, as I had mentioned I liked the Kermit the Frog hat someone was wearing. Without really thinking I told them that I can do the Kermit voice, and displayed them my "talent." They got a kick out of it, and they seemed to work pretty well after that.
During one of the passing periods, my cooperating teacher mentioned to me that one student in particular never participated in class for him, and yet since I have started, this student has raised their hand and answered questions multiple days in a row. Maybe I am making a difference, or maybe it's just because I'm young. I hope it's a little bit of the first one at least.
On to my second algebra class, which was only 29 minutes due to the delay. This class had the bad luck of having me rush through my material so they wouldn't fall behind their "twin sister" class. Luckily, they seemed to understand it, at least the students who were listening did. I even had one kid ask me about the Kermit voice from the other class. I would not perform it a second time. In this class students are very responsive, but talkative at times, when I am trying to teach. I think they see me as more of a buddy than a teacher, which can become a troubling thing when I get out there in the real world. Hopefully I can break this trend before it becomes worse. Back to the teaching portion though. Students in this class seem to like me, and they like to get their work done. Luckily for this class, and unknowing to the other Algebra class, they have gotten half the assignments of my 4th period algebra class, due to the shortened class time to finish the assignments. Overall, it was a fun day, especially at the Faculty meeting, where my cooperating teacher won Teacher of the Month for January 2011. I also got to referee the 6th grade girls basketball game at my school, which turned out to be a pretty good thriller.
Anyways, two hour delay days are a big odd, since your class periods go 1 4 2 3 5 6 7. 1st hour is about 40 minutes, while 4th is the the full 60, and the rest are a mere 29 minutes. What's nice about the 29 minute classes is it seems to make the day go by quickly. Then again, that's the bad part about it, because it moves too quickly. I am rearing up for this countdown to ISTEP starting Thursday. According to my cooperating teacher, its supposed to be a 10-20 minute review of what is on the upcoming ISTEP test, for 10 DAYS!! It is not something I am looking forward to. Today, which I most regretfully forgot, was hat day, where students get to wear hats if they donated a dollar for a fundraiser. I saw Kermit the Frog hats, Eoore (sp?) hats, and even Panda bear winter caps. I can tell some students have taken fond of me, especially when one student who rarely talks comes up to me to show me their new shirt. "Mr. Kerwin, check out my new shirt, my Dad got it for me!" Well if you saw this shirt, it would remind you of the Wolf Pack from professional Wrestling in the 90's, Dwight Schrute's epic wolf shirt from the office, or the Wolf Pack shirt from that weird guy on The Hangover. It was a wolf with a background of a wolf howling in front of a moon. Honestly, not my taste, but I thought I would say that I liked it anyway.
My Pre-algebra classes are still in control of my cooperating teacher, and hopefully I will be taking over everything as of next week. I never thought grading papers would be this big of a hassle, and is the only thing I don't look forward to over the course of the next few months. In my algebra classes, where I taught the polynomial division by monomials, is where I enjoyed most of my day. My first, or 4th hour Algebra class gets me the full time. I reviewed some of their previous days homework, and of course they had me do the longest and most drawn out problem on their homework, but I guess that's what I deserve for assigning such a problem. That took longer than I had expected but quickly moved on to dividing with a monomial. They understood the concept and seemd to get what I was talking about. A group of students that always talks a lot, yet turns in their work on time, started asking me non-related questions, as I had mentioned I liked the Kermit the Frog hat someone was wearing. Without really thinking I told them that I can do the Kermit voice, and displayed them my "talent." They got a kick out of it, and they seemed to work pretty well after that.
During one of the passing periods, my cooperating teacher mentioned to me that one student in particular never participated in class for him, and yet since I have started, this student has raised their hand and answered questions multiple days in a row. Maybe I am making a difference, or maybe it's just because I'm young. I hope it's a little bit of the first one at least.
On to my second algebra class, which was only 29 minutes due to the delay. This class had the bad luck of having me rush through my material so they wouldn't fall behind their "twin sister" class. Luckily, they seemed to understand it, at least the students who were listening did. I even had one kid ask me about the Kermit voice from the other class. I would not perform it a second time. In this class students are very responsive, but talkative at times, when I am trying to teach. I think they see me as more of a buddy than a teacher, which can become a troubling thing when I get out there in the real world. Hopefully I can break this trend before it becomes worse. Back to the teaching portion though. Students in this class seem to like me, and they like to get their work done. Luckily for this class, and unknowing to the other Algebra class, they have gotten half the assignments of my 4th period algebra class, due to the shortened class time to finish the assignments. Overall, it was a fun day, especially at the Faculty meeting, where my cooperating teacher won Teacher of the Month for January 2011. I also got to referee the 6th grade girls basketball game at my school, which turned out to be a pretty good thriller.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Feb. 7th
Today was the first day back after a luxurious 6 day ice storm break. Even though it is nearly a week since the storm hit on Monday night, my road is still very dangerous, and was proven to me by how I nearly was unable to accelerate through a 4-way intersection. Anyways, all the students were in a chatter since many of them had not seen one another for much of the "break." As a teacher, I have learned that these 3 days off of school have really put more pressure on me and the other teachers in the math department. We were supposed to have "wasted" an entire day talking about the ISTEP prep tests and what they needed to improve on. Due to the canceled days of school, we were unable to do so. When it came to my student teaching experience, it postponed my duty of taking complete control of both the Pre-Algebra, and Algebra classes. I decided to stick with just teaching the Algebra classes for this week. As you would have thought, review was needed in order to move on and move swiftly. Oh, I forgot to mention, today was also a 2-hr delay, leaving me only 29 minutes for my second Algebra class. My first was still normal since it occurs during the lunch hour. In each class I reviewed special case binomial multiplication as well as using the distributive property. Their task was to complete a worksheet on multiplying polynomials of different sizes, mainly binomials and trinomials. It seemed that the students understood what was going on at first, but when they came upon the harder ones, time was becoming too big of a factor. In each of my classes, I cut the homework nearly in half. I believe that as long as they understand the distributive property itself, I should not need to assign them a ton of problems. I also decided to cut the homework because the more difficult ones had so much work involved, it was taking some kids nearly 20 minutes to finish one problem. I had not done the worksheet ahead of time, and I have now learned that I should probably at least start to work through the problems so I have some sort of sense as to how much time THEY will end up spending on it.
On a different note, I had noticed today that one of the more quiet girls in one of the pre-algebra classes had changed something about her appearance. I wasn't too sure what she did but I told her that she looked different and that I liked it. Immediately, the girl sitting next to her was basically begging me to compliment her. Being put on the spot like that, I wasn't too sure what to say, so then she began to explain to me what was different than before. I had not noticed, even after she explained it all to me. The only reason I noticed the other girl is because she looked relatively the same every day, and today was different. I figure if I lighten up to her and show my compassion, she might open up and get some work done.
Just when I thought the whole crush thing was over, an entire group of girls in my last hour class were just giggling and staring at me while I was trying to teach the review and the somewhat new stuff. So if you are reading this supervisors, this would be the most interesting class to come visit me in.
On a funny note, a cubs fan in one of my classes asked me this "So besides being a White Sox fan, what do you have against the Cubs?" I just laughed and said "Do I need any other reason?" He thought it was funny and we had a good laugh. It's nice to know that the students are truly interested in what you have to say.
On a different note, I had noticed today that one of the more quiet girls in one of the pre-algebra classes had changed something about her appearance. I wasn't too sure what she did but I told her that she looked different and that I liked it. Immediately, the girl sitting next to her was basically begging me to compliment her. Being put on the spot like that, I wasn't too sure what to say, so then she began to explain to me what was different than before. I had not noticed, even after she explained it all to me. The only reason I noticed the other girl is because she looked relatively the same every day, and today was different. I figure if I lighten up to her and show my compassion, she might open up and get some work done.
Just when I thought the whole crush thing was over, an entire group of girls in my last hour class were just giggling and staring at me while I was trying to teach the review and the somewhat new stuff. So if you are reading this supervisors, this would be the most interesting class to come visit me in.
On a funny note, a cubs fan in one of my classes asked me this "So besides being a White Sox fan, what do you have against the Cubs?" I just laughed and said "Do I need any other reason?" He thought it was funny and we had a good laugh. It's nice to know that the students are truly interested in what you have to say.
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