Mar. 7th

After the long, yet seemingly short, week of ISTEP, seems to come a time in the year where I actually may get normal weeks and schedules. Honestly, it is kind of nerve racking because I haven't had a normal week since I have started student teaching. I have rarely had a full week, let alone a normal week. This kind of change will effect my lesson planning, because for a while I was able to easily plan for 30 minute lessons, and now must plan for 50 minute lessons once again. Also, today, I am a bit under the weather, recently being struck with a ferocious cough, and to top it all off, I forgot my lunch. I went hungry....bow bow bow.

Pre-Algebra:

We are still working on the Project: Polygon assignment I started on Wednesday of last week. Today, though, I decided to just give a few minutes and allow them to share with the class. There were a few good ones, but mostly lack of effort pieces of junk. I was a little disappointed in the lack of effort that was displayed by these students. Mainly because I am trying to do something that they might be able to enjoy, and they still complain and whine and try to get out of it as much as possible. I would think creating the name and shape of a new polynomial would be pretty fun. Apparently the students who thought it would be fun, made great polynomial names and designs. Some of which are going to be posted in the administration building, which apparently is a big deal at Northside. I picked the ones I thought would be worthy of being posted at the ad building, and only came up with 3 good ones, including a Houseogon, and a Transformagon. Some other clever names for shapes were Mexi-gon, named after the only Mexican child in my class, and Big Chanellegon, which is named after the clothing company. After they presented their polygons in class, I talked about how the Volume of a Prism, first explaining the definition of a prism, is area of the base times the height. I showed them a few examples and gave them a few problems in the book to work on.


Algebra Classes:


My plan today was to give out the pre-test to my LAMP unit and move right on into the next section. Little did I know, both classes nearly spent the entire class period trying to complete a Pre-Test they didn't know how to do. Instead I decided, after the pre-test, that I would review a bit about what we had done the past few days. Students looked at me like I had never mentioned any of this material before today. This kind of made me mad, and yet they still seemed to want to put the blame on me for teaching it to them on a friday, when they clearly understood everything that was going on. So today I just went over the notes, and hopefully they will be ready to move on tomorrow and the next days. On the test I have already noticed some odd answers, such as I love you, but not the math, and only you could teach me how to do this with a wink. Let's just say I'm a little offset due to these answers, but I guess there will definitely be mass improvement becuase of the fact they all got F's.

Weird day, it seems like the more I teach, the more I realize what I do wrong as a teacher. I guess it comes with time, age, and experience. The more I experience the easier it will become hopefully.