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.