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.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
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.
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.
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.
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