April 12-15th

Well there has been another absence on this blog once again. That's alright though, nothing all that big happened to me last week. Except it was what I have come to call my Zombie week. Last week I had been working on my portfolio and Lamp projects a lot and was spending less and less time preparing for my everyday "job" of teaching in my classroom. I felt like I was just running through the motions, and sure enough I was. My cooperating teacher was keen about letting me know about it. I sucked up the criticism with pride and realized that I was lacking in performance and it seemed that I didn't want to be there. With an attitude like that, your students tend to be non-responsive and tend to behave rather disrespectfully. Countdown to ISTEP has been something of a struggle for me as well. This is something that becomes not only boring and repetitive for the students, but boring as a teacher to distribute every day in each class. It makes it especially hard to plan because it takes almost half the class sometimes. Either way, this didn't help in the contribution to what I am now calling my Zombie week. As a teacher, I can't have bad days, I can only have good days or better days.
On Friday, I gave out a test on Solving Quadratic Equations and Functions. I thought this would be a really easy test, considering we had beeon wroking on this stuff for a long time, and I allowed open notes. I hope I'm right, even though I am ending up allowing more time on Monday for students to work on the test, in an effort to allow enough time for them to work.

I attended and helped at a track meet held at the middle school on Thursday of last week. It was beautiful outside and they were playing the neighboring middle school that many of my friends had participated their practicum in. This was fun and interesting, mainly because I attended the event in very leisurely attire. I wore shorts and my favorite hat. Most of my students came up to say hello to me, and it was great to cheer some of them on. I helped time the running events and talked with coaches about field events. I was legitimately interested in how track and fields worked from a coaching perspective. It was great to see the team win and to see some of the phenomenal athletes at the school I teach at. It was really rewarding to see the kids' faces when they saw that I was there to support them.

Monday April 11th

Well, I know I haven't posted in a week, but I was pretty busy. To sum up last week, here I go: I had to remediate like a son-of-a-gun, and on Thursday, my university supervisor came in and gave me pretty solid reviews. However, just as I thought, I need work on how much time something will take in class. Apparently, this is something you never get perfect at as a teacher because your students change every year, at least that's what my cooperating teacher said. That's about all I have to say about last week, and really it's been pretty hard to keep up with this daily blog and everything else going on in my life right now. Trying to do this daily blog was a good idea, but just has become something more of an obstacle than something I enjoy writing about now.

April 1st

Well it's April Fool's day on a Friday, and let's just say I am a little nervous about what the students might try to pull for pranks on me. I didn't have any pranks planned for my students, because I wanted to make sure I focused on what was going on for the day, which was a quiz I was giving to each class, as a way to test and assess where they stand on the material we were working on. I assumed that these students would basically ace these quizzes.

Pre-Algebra Classes
The original idea behind these quizzes is that it was only going to take them 15-20 minutes. It took both classes more like 25-30 minutes as a whole. Which was a little disheartening, but the more I looked at the quizzes and tests, the more I noticed that the students who paid attention did well on the quiz, and the ones who never seemed to pay attention were the ones who asked for the most help. Correlation? Yes, of course it makes sense that the students who pay attention and do what they are supposed to do, do well on tests and quizzes. Some students just have trouble with a few ideas of multiplying and dividing with the distributive property, but it seemed that most students did pretty well. What does this mean? This means that I think I have done a good job teaching the material and that they should be ready to move on to a new subject. At least that's what it seemed like. When they finished, I had them do a color by answer type problem. During 1st hour, I kind of messed up the whole thing because I didn't assign a color for each answer, so students could have colored it really whatever color they wanted. I didn't have a whole lot of time to put it together before 1st hour because I got there later than anticipated, so I forgot to. However, during my 3rd period prep, I fixed this problem and 5th hour was able to do it the correct way.

Algebra Classes
I was really confident when I was handing out my quizzes, I had practiced the quiz before hand, but made a little mental error in the creation of my solve by graphing problem. I made the vertex and axis of symmetry pretty hard to graph. What I was going for was simple answers, or solutions, to the problem, and I didn't put enough thought into the whole process in graphing such a difficult problem. I was extremely disappointed in how many students still didn't have their notes. Their notes really would have helped them on their quiz. There were a few problems on solving either by factoring or completing the square. Many students had the completing the square technique and process down pat the day before, so I thought this part would go extremely well. It was obvious the kids were giving up too easily and not following the proper directions I gave them in class. Students even forgot how to factor, which is unacceptable considering we worked on factoring polynomials for weeks at a time. It turned from a quiz/assessment to a cooperative learning experience. Which is alright. It just means that they need more work with completing the square and factoring. Good thing the plan is to review this on Monday for the upcoming STI test. It wasn't surprising to see the students who got it, got it, and the students I knew would have trouble, had tons of trouble. Sometimes I have heard that the students want my teacher to teach a certain subject because he explained it extremely well to one student separately. I don't want to just tell them how to solve every problem they do, so when I go over homework, I ask them all what I should be doing next. I am doing my best, so when a student tells me I'm not doing it well enough, it really gets me going because I want to do the best I can.


My 4th hour class got me on a good April Fool's Prank today during their reading time. Before 4th hour, I have to watch the boys bathroom around the corner from my room. I had a feeling something was up when the normal group that walks past me didn't take the same route to class. I just assumed maybe they were stopping into another class. A student "stalled" me by asking me questions on my way to class, and when I got there, a few students were missing. I asked where one in particular was, and they all agreed that he had a referral and was sent down to the office. (believable with this student) So I thought nothing of it. For the first 10 minutes of class, students are supposed to read their Accelerated Reading books. Well, none of them had it, and they kept asking for graphing calculators, which were located in a closet to the back left of where I teach in the classroom. I convinced them that I would be reading them a book in class since no one brought a book. Then my teacher harped up and said "Well there are some sports magazines in that closet for them to read." So of course I thought I was home free for pranks, but when I opened the door, the student that "had a referral" jumped out and scared the living tar out of me. He claimed later in class that I had a "look of terror" when he jumped out of that closet. At least I know the kids like me enough to come up with a prank.
Apparently, they wanted to all leave the room before I got there, but of course the notion of that idea was not entertained and shut down immediately upon request by my cooperating teacher.

Mar. 28th

The Monday after Spring Break! Something I wasn't really all that excited for. I was really hoping to sleep in some more but back to the "job." I was excited to be back and teaching, but I could tell the students really wanted a longer break.

Pre-Algebra Classes
Something I was expecting was either an excessive amount of talking or complete zombies because students went to bed too late from being used to the late bed times from break. It was pleasantly in the middle. In my 1st period class, almost everyone was responsive and pleasant, and some were even cracking sarcastic jokes. What I did was review what we had talked about on the Wednesday and Thursday before break, which was solving multi-step equations. I gave them a worksheet to work on, and it seemed like most of the class was more focused on telling all their friends about where they went on break. I was a little reluctant to completely stop it because they haven't seen some of these people in over a week. I kept most of them on task and on topic. It is really frustrating to have the same students not getting it simply because they aren't paying attention. 5th period was more of the same. I had to give a small lecture about how when I call on someone I don't want everyone to answer. Hopefully they will get the hint that I want the person I ask to answer...to answer. 5th hour got further with the worksheet than 1st hour, just as I had suspected.


Algebra Classes

Today I was reviewing a bit and beginning the discussion on solving quadratic equations by completing the square. 4th hour didn't go all that well. They were having a lot of trouble with what I called the Speedy Review (with Speedy Gonzales). This review was on solving quadratic equations by factoring, which is what we had been working with the week before break. I thought they would have no trouble with this. Some students had completely forgotten how to factor a polynomial, let alone what factoring was. I also had a problem on solving by graphing a quadratic equation. They looked at that one like they had never seen it before. My plan was to spend 10 minutes, or so, on this and move on to solving by completing the square. Instead I had to try and rush in what I wanted to say in a shortened period of time. I mentioned a few good points but didn't give them a simple step-by-step approach to solving by completing the square. I could tell they left completely puzzled as how to or what completing the square was.
We (my cooperating teacher and I) corrected the mishap in 7th period and that class seemed to go smoothly. The only thing I didn't like was the fact that I lectured almost the entire class. I really don't like and don't think I can hold the attention span of the students for 50 minutes, especially when one class goes to lunch afterward, and the other class goes home for the day. Either way, I thought 7th period was much more prepared to show me what they could do tomorrow.

Thoughts on the day. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, except that two students in my 7th period class were talking just about the entire time I was trying to explain to them step-by-step on how to complete this never before seen progress to solve quadratic equations. Before I could really keep them after and tell them what I had on my mind, my cooperating teacher said exactly what I was thinking. They understood and are hopefully behaved tomorrow.
My 5th period class tends to get out of control sometimes, and it's not because they don't have work to do, it's simply because of who they are. I also need to put down the hammer and give out some more referrals if I feel they are necessary.

Mar. 16th

This day, I decided to give a pop-quiz to all of my classes

Pre-Algebra:
Their quiz was on the area of shapes and the volume of prisms. Honestly, they did pretty well, considering most points missed were on the lack of correct units. I had it set up to where they could use their reference sheets, and I had them name the objects. This would give them points if they didn't know how to find the actual volume. I thought this was a good idea because many of the students don't know which formula to use if they are trying to find the area of volume of an object. There wasn't a whole lot of time left in either class so I quickly reviewed what questions could have come up on surface area, and I gave them an extra day to finish their surface area activity I assigned the day before.

Algebra Classes:
Their quiz was on graphing and solving quadratic equations by graphing. Of the three problems that had students find the square roots of the problem, almost every student forgot to put both the positive and negative solutions of the square root. They took surprisingly long to finish this quiz though, especially since I allowed them to use their notes. There wasn't a whole lot of time, so I assigned 3 problems from a worksheet I made on Infinite Algebra where the coefficient is not equal to 1.



I was called a vacuum in my 5th period class because I "suck the fun out of the class." I had a slight little lecture with this class because I have to spend most of my time getting them to stop talking. Hopefully this attitude changes for them.

Goal:
I need to get better at classroom authority. I need to write referrals if I have to, and I have to try not to be their friends.

Mar. 15th

Pre- Algebra Classes
Today, in my pre-algebra classes I came up with an activity at about 7:50 in the morning, and decided to use it in class. I thought it would be a good thing to use for students to move around and get things going. I made this activity and expected it to take the class time, and allow them time to finish at home. In my 1st hour class, I briefly went over surface area formulas and volume formulas, and then gave them time in class to work. My teacher completely left the class. I really felt like it was completely my own class. He didn't come back until the class period ended. It was a pretty good feeling, and I thought that I was ready for something like this. I think one thing I need to work on with this class is either have them write notes or give them notes to take. The project, though, was a project that just had them measure and find the surface area of 5 objects in the classroom, or at home if they didn't finish in class.
5th Period was a hassle by myself. They were so concerned with where my cooperating teacher was that it took them forever to get under control. It took me longer to explain what was going on with the project than it did for my 1st period class. I put a little thing in spanish for the one mexican-american I have in my class. He thought it was funny and we had to explain what the phrase meant in english. I could tell they didn't like the project, but at least it was an attempt for a change of pace idea.

Algebra Classes
In my algebra classes, I decided that I cleared up any questions yesterday about what we had been doing, so I decided to move onto solving quadratic equations by factoring. With the notes, I went step-by-step, and the further I got into the notes, it seemed a lot of students forgot how to factor, and this is going to be a major problem if I can't correct this. I showed them the zero product property and how they can solve each polynomial by setting them to zero and finding the value of their variable that solved the equation. I gave them an 8 problem half-worksheet where a few of them had already been factored. All of these happened to be problems that had a lead coefficient of 1. The 7th period class erupted in excitement when I told them I was attending the after school dance as a chaperon. Little did I know it was going to be an interesting event for me.


After School Dance
Before the dance even started, I was asked by 4 girls to be their date to the dance. Of course, I turned them down, but in the nicest way I could think possible. Oh yeah, I was asked by two guys from my classes to be their dates. I also turned them down, but at least I know they were joking with me. The principal dedicated a Justin Beiber song to me. He came over to me after he did that and was crackin' up. Apparently he only picked me because my head was the only thing he saw, and yes, I know my head is extremely large and is above the crowd as it is. The choir teacher was the DJ and had pretty low quality equipment. They had some terrible sub-woofers and the overall sound quality was muffled. I could have borrowed my dad's equipment and gotten clearer results. It might have also been the fact that the volume was turned up extremely loud to cover the sound of the gym. This whole tid-bit feeds into my awesome dancing. I was talking with the band director when the choir teacher (DJ) calls out that he has to dance to this song. A huge circle of students surrounded us, and before I knew it, we were both dancing like idiots. It was fun, and then we realized we were being videotaped. (hooray!! Video is on facebook and youtube, haven't seen it, and I don't want to) So I wasn't the only teacher I knew being humiliated I made one of the teachers I had become friends with, so I made him jump in too. It was a lot of fun, I even pulled out the shopping cart dance, and the old pull-start lawn-mower.
Towards the second half of the dance, a few of the girls that I have in class were following me, but every time I turned around to see what they were doing they turned around as if they weren't doing anything. It was quite adorable, and the next thing I knew there was a group of about 15 girls following me. That was kind of odd, but I didn't make a big deal out of it. From the words of another teacher "Oh! Bless their little Hearts!!" That's about all anyone can say about that. Overall, I had a great time, and I got a free slice of pizza out of the whole thing, so I was happy about that.

Mar. 14th

Monday Monday...blah dahhh blah dah dah dah....so good toooo me.

It's another Monday, and another day I expect my students to be pretty laid back and non-responsive, but to my avail, they were extremely talkative and responsive to what I was teaching.

Pre-Algebra
I was ending my time with volume and hoping to get a touch into surface area. The volume I spent my time on was volume of pyramids and cones. Hopefully, I got it across to the students that the volume of a pyramid is the same formula as the volume of a prism, except that a pyramid is 1/3 the volume of the prism. It seemed like they understood where this was coming from. I gave them in class. I was also told during 5th period that I am like a vacuum because I suck all the fun out of the class. If you know my 5th period class, you can understand why I might "take the fun out of it." I have to spend twice as much time as any other class trying to get them to quiet down and pay attention for a few minutes. It is nearly impossible to get them on task right away. It seems that whenever I transition at all, they just immediately get to talking and stop listening to me right away. I have to wait and listen, and I think I am running out of patience with this class. I have given them many opportunities to work in groups or do activities, and without fail, they barely work. Then they have no idea what to do after I explain what was going on because they weren't listening while I explained it. Many students in both of these classes have a lot of missing assignments, resulting in very low and disappointing percentage grades.

Algebra Classes

Like I mentioned on Friday, my teacher and I discussed giving the class a problem that was similar to what we had been working on for the last few days. This did not go nearly as well as I had hoped. I was hoping just to touch on this for about 10 minutes and move on to solving quadratics by factoring, but of course this didn't happen. In fact, both classes spent almost all of the class time on these two bell work problems, It was very frustrating and I was ready to move on so I can be done with my LAMP unit, because the 10 days that are supposed to be for a lamp project are really more like 15 or 20 days. OH well I guess that I will learn from this as I move on to become a full fledged paid employee of the state of whatever state I end up living in.

Mar. 10th and 11th.

MARCH 10TH

Pre-Algebra Classes

Today I was continuing the discussion on finding the area of shapes. After looking at the students' responses to some of the trapezoidal areas, I decided to start off the class with a frayer Model that involved identifying shapes to understand which area formula to use. It was nice for them to realize what kind of shape they were working with. I also had the students work on a worksheet about area, with a little remediation on using Pythagorean Theorem. I thought this was a great idea because they had some trouble on the ISTEP prep test over the Pythagorean Theorem, and really have no idea when to use it in general. So I thought that showing them when they need to use the theorem is as important as knowing how to use it as well. Many students did well with understanding what needed to be done, but there were also students that needed help across the board. With this worksheet, I not only had them find the area, I also had them name the shape so they could go to their Frayer reference sheet to find what area formula goes with each shape. This seemed to work pretty well, and students were now able to distinguish between a Parallelogram and a Trapezoid. The principal walked into today's class and really liked the remediation I had chosen to do. I found out how he liked it because he talked to my cooperating teacher while it was all going on. I felt proud to know that the principal thought well of what I was doing in his school's classroom.

Algebra Classes

Today was yet another day of solving quadratic equations by both graphing and finding the square root. In 4th period I corrected any lost souls that might have been lost. My teacher said he was going to do what he did yesterday in 7th hour and step in and teach the lesson. I wasn't going to let that happen again, so I just went with the flow and did a great job. It seemed like the students really understood what was going on. I gave them step by step instructions to solving a quadratic equation by graphing, which cleared up many problems that the students had from the previous day. The first thing I did in my 4th period class was talk about 4 "Bell work" problems we had done the day before. Discussed how not one student put both the positive and negative answers for a square root. This was pretty fun, because they all thought they were correct. I then proceeded to review how to graph and solve a quadratic function step-by-step. This really helped this class and allowed them to better grasp the topic. 7th hour was basically the same topic. I did a good job in this class making sure all the students understood what was going on. Gave both classes a worksheet to work on where they find the axis of symmetry, vertex, and are given a t-table to graph.



FRIDAY MARCH 11TH


Pre-Algebra Classes

Since I had spent multiple days on finding area, I decided to re-teach in a sense, the topic of finding volume of prisms. I had a worksheet with half of it a Frayer model of Prism, Triangular Prism, and cylinder. I had them draw pictures for the examples and non-examples, I thought it was really important for them to understand what the formula in the back of the book meant for base times height, where it really means Area of the Base times the height. Many completed the worksheet very promptly and quickly, in 5th period that is. 1st period, most students did not finish, but were nearly finished. I assigned the remaining problems for homework in both classes. It seemed like they were finally understanding this concept of volume of prisms.


Algebra Classes

Today was the last day I plan on spending on solving quadratic equations by graphing. I spent a few minutes beginning the day with more review. It seemed to be going really well. A worksheet was given to them, which had 12 problems where they needed to solve the equations by graphing. It seemed, at first, that the students were completely getting it. They knew the steps to finding the solutions, and they seemed to understand what was going on. I could tell a few students weren't on the same page, but I figured everyone was just about ready to move on. My teacher suggested that I give them a problem where the function isn't in standard form, in an attempt to make the students think more. I thought it was a good suggestion so I think I am going to go with it on Monday, and hopefully move on to solving quadratic equations by factoring.




I'm not sure what it is with these girls, but I was cleverly given a girls sexual education papers she had written during her health class. I did not even attempt to read them, and simply threw them out. When they asked later about the papers I simply told them "What Papers?"

Mar. 9th

Wednesday, the day I go in early for a PLC meeting. It seems like for the half hour meeting we have once a week, 10 minutes of it is productive and the other 20 minutes is a griping session about how much it sucks there to be a math teacher. It scares me to say the least sometimes when I see all teachers like this, because I hope I never get to the point where, as I'm walking into the building, I don't want to be there.

Pre- Algebra Classes

It seems like I have been on perimeter and area for ages. What I did was have them complete what was a mid chapter quiz in their book. Part of it included using the Pythagorean Theorem to find missing sides of a right triangle, as well as graphing a polygon onto the coordinate plane and finding the area of the figure created by those plotted points. Honestly, I thought this would take a mere 25 minutes or so. Of course I am never right when it comes to time, and it essentially took longer than the entire class period, meaning many students did not finish the in class assignment. After class, me and my cooperating teacher decided too look over the work and hand it back the following day. Many of the students couldn't identify common shapes. I kept getting asked what a shape was, that was a parallelogram, and what the formula was for area. I had all the students using their resource knowledge and looking in the backs of the books. It seems like these kids are finally understanding what pythagorean theorem is and how to find the area of polygons.


Algebra

Today kind of sucked for theses classes. I have been moving at a pace that is too fast for my students, and I've left instruction up to them to learn the details, and it really wasn't working out. I taught my 4th period Algebra class on finding solutions to quadratic equation, and didn't do too well. Students were lost, and really had no idea what exactly was going on. I'm not sure if I completely agree with this tactic, but my teacher decided to step in the 2nd time through, and it almost felt humiliating. I know he was trying to help, but when you have been teaching for a few weeks and he decides to show me, sort of, "how it's done," it really takes the wind out of your sails. After the class, however, I felt I had a better sense of what kind of pace and simplicity I needed to teach at. I was going at a pace and vagueness that I was used to when I was in school, and this obviously didn't work for my students. I think this helped, but I was hoping for more of an approach on here's how you fix it, so try this next time through, instead of basically replacing me. Either way, he was very helpful and I'm glad he is there to guide me and help me.


Overall, I was a little discouraged after my teacher stepped in and basically took over, but then again, I understand the importance of the ECA Testing that takes place at the end of the year, and how much pressure is on him, rather than on me. The results of that test reflect on his teaching and not mine in the overall scheme of things. I guess in a way, there was a better way to approach this than just teach it himself, but at least I'm learning and getting help.

Mar. 8th

It's a Tuesday, the morning is brisk and it is really no different than any other middle day. Often forgotten like the middle child of a family...ehem. My plan before school was to write out a lesson plan on the quadratics and administer a worksheet I had made for Pre-Algebra.

Pre-Algebra Classes-

These classes are so hard to prepare for, mainly because these students move at a much different pace than what I am used to. Also these kids seem to be the ones that listen the least and are most likely to give up as soon as they don't know the exact process they are going through. On the worksheet I gave them in class, they were to find the circumference and area of a circle as well as area of various shapes. I thought this would be a review. The idea to give this was given to me by my cooperating teacher. I'm alright with him helping me any time he feels that he needs to. I like the fact I can look up to someone and count on when I feel like I'm not doing it correctly. He has worked with children like this for 37 years. I have only worked with children like this for a few months, so anything he suggests I will at least take a look at.
These students had a surprisingly difficult time with the worksheet. It was like they had never seen any of the shapes, even though they had to use them to find the area of their Polygons from their project. I even spent time in class the day before to convey the point that the volume of a Geometric Prism is simply the area of a base (triangle in a triangular prism) times the height. They seemed to really get it, yet today they looked at a rectangle and had forgotten how to solve the area. The most frustrating thing about some of these kids is that the ones that don't pay attention want me to help them the most. I am starting to understand this, and it's not that I'm giving up on them, I just want to give the students that do give a darn a chance to get help first. It seems a little shallow of me to do this, but I think it is actually more fair. Overall I thought the worksheet went terribly and that students are far more lost on area and volume than I had thought.

Algebra Classes

In these classes I was continuing to teach on the use of quadratic functions. The lesson today was simply an extension of the previous day. I was trying to get them to understand how to find the axis of symmetry when it is not on the y-axis. I figured I would bring in the use of graphing calculators, but these gave me so many problems it was ridiculous. I'm not sure why but when a vertex should have been (0,0) it ended up being 1.8 X 10^-7 and stuff like that. I was really confused, and this help the students get off track and almost lost in a way. I know now that I need to make sure everyone has their decimal set to 2 or 3 places instead of Float. You think it wouldn't make a difference, but it made a huge difference. Either way, I need to make sure exactly what I'm dealing with before I use these calculators again. The weird thing that happened in class was a student figured out how to find the vertex once you know the axis of symmetry (look these up if you don't remember). Then when she went to do it on the homework assignment, she seemed lost. I didn't understand how they didn't know how to do substitute an x value into an equation and solve for y. To me, this was something they had been doing for a long time. It's fun to get off task with this class sometimes, and today was no exception. We ended up on the topic of talking about some movie, I forget what it was, but it had absolutely nothing to do with math or anything that could remind you of what we were doing. I see myself as a good relegating these off task things, because I respond to it and quickly jump back into what we are doing. These classes tend to be getting a little more out of control as the year progresses. I feel like I need to clamp down. My teacher is helping me sometimes when it comes to the discipline, because he might see something that I don't and vice versa. I just think that I need to learn a school discipline plan to the finest before I really implement my own thoughts and restrictions.


Overall

I had a fun day today. I got to hang out with some of the other teachers that are closer to my age. It seems that the other teachers can sense my enthusiasm and it seems that my kindness and caring attitude is a draw for teachers to want to come speak to me. It seems like the hard times have gotten to some of the teachers. You can tell they care about their students, but the outer-shell is so rough and torn up, you would think they hate their job and their life. I hope my job as a teacher never turns into a chore. I assume it will always leave me with surprises and keep me on my toes. Today a student forgot his AR (accelerated reader) book, and instead of sitting there and doing nothing, he decided to look over the shoulder of the student in front of him and read the book they were reading. I was trying to hold it in, but I kept laughing, probably distracting the students from their reading time, but it was too funny not to laugh at. I had to explain to the other students why I was laughing afterward.
During lunch, I had been invited by the gym teacher I usually eat lunch with to come up into the wrestling room and play this Wii game where they dance the whole time. She had gotten me and a few female teachers to join in on the festivities. Little did I know the class was all girls. As the song they were dancing to ended, some girls I had earlier in the day, saw me and went "ahh Mr. Kerwin is here!?!?" and proceeded to "faint" to the ground. I just smiled and laughed quietly, as I heard them saying "I hope he didn't see all of our dancing." The two female teachers and I went up to the front and dance battled a song where we did a lot of Russian dance moves. It was a lot of fun, but it was a shame I got a close second place. I scored a solid gold score, and yet I lost by 2200 points. Either way I had a lot of fun doing it, and you could tell the girls were glad I was there because they wanted me to jump in right away, and were begging me to do one more song near the end of the class period.
Faculty meeting at the end of the school day today. We talked about the new discipline plan and what we need to do. It was pretty enlightening because I had no idea what the new plan had implemented into the school. We also sort of made complaints about things that weren't working and what we should do under this new plan. We also asked about when to write referrals. It was nice to hear that other teachers are having the same problems as me, though I don't some of the attitudes they have. Makes me go back to how it seems that teachers lose their shine after a while and get chopped down by the hardships of teaching and lose the teacher they really are, and get bitter. Luckily my cooperating teacher hasn't lost his luster, and I'm thankful that I can be placed with such a wonderful guy.

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.

Mar. 2nd ISTEP- Day 2

Today was quite an interesting day. I decided to wear my favorite tie, which is a plain neon green tie. I wear this with a black shirt and black pants. I honestly chose this to wear because this dress outfit is one of my favorites of all time.
The reason this made it interesting is because at the start of the day, well before the day even officially started, I had a girl tell me that my tie looked sexy on me. I didn't say anything, and after she had walked away I wondered how to react to such a comment. Luckily I was told I did the right thing, because the student that spoke up was a student that is regularly inappropriate. I brushed it off. Throughout the day I got constant comments about how people liked my tie and all the girls said I looked really snazzy and complimented on my tie over and over again. I even heard a conversation between two girls about how "fine I looked." After all of this I feel like I am not going to wear this tie very often.

Pre- Algebra Classes

Today was the day I decided to bring out my Polygon project. This is also the last time I am letting the classes chose their own groups, mainly because in both classes, there are a few groups that just won't do anything. This project though was mainly explained in my friday post, and that is what I stuck to. I think it was a great idea for a project and it allows the students to find the area of their shapes. A few shapes I got from some of the groups were a Houseogon, which is shaped like a house, and a DogsniffingthegroundwithhisbuttintheairGON. I know that last one is long, but he convinced me that it looked like that, and it did! Overall I think they understand the task and are having a fun time completing this project. Some of the students think it was a dumb idea. I really can't stand when students tell me that a fun creative project is boring. It's almost like they would rather just sit there and do the norm where I lecture and they do homework.


Algebra Classes

These classes are finally starting a new chapter. Well, really I just wanted to move on. I moved on to quadratic functions and equations. What I did today was really have the students take notes. My 4th hour honors algebra class was extremely disruptive, and at the end of class I even had a few students wait a minute to explain to them that I will not put up with their nonsense. When these students get going, the entire class gets off task. The 4th hour class is the only normal class during the ISTEP week. Yet, my 7th hour class was able to get further in the notes because they were not being disruptive about during the note-taking at all. I was told during my 7th hour class that I should have worn all black instead of a green tie to look more like a ninja. It is kind of hard not to laugh at something like that.


My 4th hour class almost pushed me over the edge, but I held myself together, and decided to give them a warning. I feel like I am going to have to take action if the misbehaving keeps up.

Mar. 1st- Day One of ISTEP (Round 1)

Today was the first round of ISTEP. Since I am not a certified teacher, I am unable to do ANYTHING while the ISTEP test is being administered. My only task was to pass out calculators today during the math portion to other teachers that may or may not have needed extras.

Pre- Algebra Classes

Because of the ISTEP test, many students thought they weren't going to be doing anything else legitimate in their other classes, so my first period class brought nothing but what they brought with them to their testing center. I don't know about you, but if you had planned everything to be in the book, wouldn't you be mad if you had to change all your plans at the last second? I was, but I sucked it up and went ahead and did what I needed to do, which was understanding the meaning behind the area of a trapezoid, parallelogram, and the review of the area of a triangle. My first hour class is so dead and quiet. It seems like I never get them to respond. I had a student writing notes while I was talking. I found it amusing that she asked me for her notes back multiple times, and each time I just simply said "no." She asked one time "Is it alright if I have my notebook back?" I wish I could have laughed at her, but I decided to simply say "No, you can't have it back." I was tired of people writing notes. I feel like I will write referrals for students who fall asleep during class or students who write notes. There are a few students in this class I have constantly told to stop either writing notes or sleeping. I am just going to write them referrals and go from there.
My 5th period class was a little more responsive, but it always seems that the same student answers questions. I have quite a few problem children in this class as well, yet they seem to cooperate with me quite well. I was able to use the book with this class because any student that did not have their book with them I sent them back to their locker, and I told them that if they were late, I would write them a tardy. Somehow, no student was late, mainly because the passing period was accidentally 6 minutes instead of 5.

Algebra Classes

These two classes just continued their learning on factoring polynomials that are cubic and are four terms. They seemed to have forgotten all the other things we had learned in factoring, which was a little frustrating, because they basically threw out the flow chart I handed them to help them remember what to do when factoring. After today it seems like the students who got it really get it, the students who kind of got it are starting to get it, and the students who didn't get it aren't getting it any better, mainly because they give up too quickly. Oh well, it's time to move on, I have been on factoring polynomials for wayyy too long.


Thoughts on the day:
I am pretty sure that I have a solid relationship with almost all of my students. To be honest, I don't care if I start to damage some relationships by writing referrals. Now I know why students think teachers just pick on them. They don't realize their own actions are the reasons a teacher "picks" on them. It happens because they are the ones who generally are the ones causing the trouble. I had an instance today where I got tired of two students making this weird noise. The problem was I only thought it was one student. I told this student to stop, was asked why, and I said because the other student was not being obnoxiously loud. I didn't mean to sound so condescending, but it just came out that way. I explained to this student that I didn't know another student was committing the "crime." We brushed it off as if nothing had happened, on my part that is.

Feb. 28th

Today was an odd day, being the only school in the Muncie area not on a two hour delay, due to the massive flooding in parts that included some bus routes, and availability for students to get to school.
The great thing about it was that it was the last day for countdown to ISTEP, which I was very thankful for because it meant an end to essentially 30 minute class periods where I would actually teach new material. Well, I thought it would be an end, because with ISTEP, I will only have 1/2 hour classes, not including my lunch hour (4th hour). It is really frustrating to have to plan for classes and keep them on the same pace when one out of your two Algebra I honors classes has twice as much time as the other class. Honestly, it's a little hard to be consistent.

Pre- Algebra Classes

Today I was planning on teaching about areas of Trapezoids and other oddly shaped quadrilaterals, and then my cooperating teacher had me look at a problem that was directly related to a problem from the previous year's ISTEP test. This problem was an area problem with 5 parts, finding both the perimeter and area of a floor, finding the amount of 2 x 2 tiles needed to cover the floor, how much money it would cost, and how much money it would cost to have members (of a sports fitness center) pay to cover the cost. So, a pretty immense and complicated problem. My first hour class took the entire hour, so going into my 5th hour Pre-Algebra class, I assumed it would take the whole class. Since I assumed this I didn't plan a whole lot of extra things for students to do. Because of this, some students were done as soon as 20 minutes before the end of class. I was a bit surprised, but didn't really have much for them to do. Since it was such an important part of ISTEP, I thought it would be pertinent to show students the problem that could save them on the ISTEP test. I know for next time to always have something planned for students to get finished.

Algebra Classes


I also gave these classes the countdown to ISTEP problem as well, assuming they would be able to complete it in minutes. I was right for the most part, though it did take a little longer than expected. It took these classes 10 minutes for my 4th period and around 20 minutes for my 7th period class. I was baffled by the fact my 7th hour took so much longer. Due to the fact, my 7th hour class had less "homework" to do than my 4th hour. I place homework in quotes because during the week of ISTEP I am not allowed to give physical homework. I can assign things for students to do in class but I can not assign actual take home work. What these classes did was factoring polynomials that were cubic polynomials with 4 terms. It seemed like they understood the basic concept of factoring before. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time in either class to thoroughly go over the material. Oh well, I think it is better for students to discover patterns and different techniques on their own.

Feb. 25th- Snow Day

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.