Come together, right now...

This week has been a sense of things coming together. As I discussed in my last post, I was sort of put on stall due to the needs of other classes and such. But this week, things have gone my way. We've been able to review for the test, do some reteaching and even create the cool foldable flap books that the kids got to use on their test (not that most of them did...) In the early part of the week I was able to work on catching up those that had been gone, and Wednesday everyone except for one absent person and the girl who missed all of the week before took the test.

It always confounds me the lack of study and test taking skills that these sixth graders have. They have sitting next to them a flap book with step by step instructions for how to multiply fractions, and two methods for dividing fraction. Yet many of them still did the wrong methods, or forgot to do steps, or mixed up division and multiplication. I couldn't believe it. I think that in my class I need to spend some serious time teaching study skills and strategies. Maybe something like a fifteen minute mini-lesson every Friday or something. Of course, with older students (theoretically) it will be less of an issue.

Well, we tested on Wednesday, and then allowed those who wanted to to re-do things that they missed on Friday. All in all it went pretty well, with no scores below a 70%. Though one student still needs her opportunity to retake. Now we're jumping into decimals, and the students seem to be having a much easier time with that. Its a bit more similar to things they are already (theoretically) good at. My big challenge now will be making my webquest functional. A webquest, for those that don't know, is a project that is hosted online, and most of the research and work are done online, and then presented in a computer format, often a power point. We are going to do one where the students have to plan a Winter vacation trip to NYC. They have budget of $2500, though I may increase this. The details are here. Monday I introduce it, and Tuesday we start working on it. Hopefully I can get it done in the time allotted. This is the first project I've tried to teach and I really hope it doesn't bomb. I guess good planning is really the only thing I can do right now, the students will determine the rest.

On other people's schedules

I had challenging situation this week. First of all I had two students who were out sick all week, one of them is a student that I am taking data on for my term project, she is also a girl who needs a little extra help usually to really grasp stuff, so I'm really concerned about what to do to get her caught up when she gets back to school. The other girl's mom has been amazing about coming in nearly every day to get homework for her daughter. She even had me explain to her what I was doing with the students so that she could teach it to her daughter. What an awesome thing to do.

So on top of having those students out of school completely, this is also the week that the sixth grade drama class performs their play. I am totally supportive of the drama program and I'm thrilled that the sixth graders get to put on a play. I am also glad that they perform it during school so that the other students all get to see it, however it did make planning my lessons on Thursday and Friday really difficult because one of the play performances was during my math class, so I didn't have nearly half my class for two days! Of the students I did have were some of my top kids. Now I couldn't very well teach a bunch of brand new stuff, because the drama kids would be totally lost, but I also couldn't just ignore the students who were in class either, especially a few of those really 'high flying' kids who were pretty much demanding a challenge.

So here is what I ended up doing. Thursday I retaught the algorithm I had been teaching earlier in the week. It's a way to divide fractions by finding a common denominator work. I like it because it functions the same way that the model method for dividing fractions works, and it builds off of the algorithm they already know for multiplication (multiply the denominators and the numerators straight across). But it is asking kids to think a little more then simply 'flip and multiply'. To make matters more difficult, the other math teacher, as well as many kids parents or previous teachers have taught them the standard algorithm. So getting them to do it this way has been difficult and some of them are just finally getting it now. So I retaught that.

My teacher's policy is that any homework that is a 60% or lower must be redone in order to receive credit, so I have a lot of kids with 'missing' work, either they didn't' turn it in or need to redo it. A lot. As in more then half the class. So after reteaching the algorithm, I posted a dozen practice problems on the overhead, and students could work on makeup/late/redo work, or work on the practice problems.

A couple of my high students wanted a challenge, so I briefly explained to them the extra step in dividing mixed numbers (still using my common denominator algorithm) and then let them work independently out of the book to practice that (even though we aren't getting to it officially until Monday).

Friday was more or less the same, except instead of reteaching the algorithm, I spent some time teaching dividing mixed numbers, but again, I didn't spend very much time on it, just an introduction, because that is my topic for Monday's lesson. I'm glad that students ended up getting some time to work on late/redo work because the number of missing assignments now is about half of what it was on Wednesday. Sixth graders are still really committed to wanting to do well in school and getting all their stuff in, even if they don't always have the organizational or study skills to make it happen effectively.

So the lesson learned is that even though it may eventually be my classroom, I will still have to work around others schedules. And also that some catchup time for students can make all the difference for them getting things or not getting things.

Things I've noticed

Students sure behave differently when they are on a field trip. This was a while back, but I never got a change to write about it. On the bus to and from Sky camp, I observed how opposit some students behave. Maddy, who is a great student, pays attention, always asks for help and is very respectful was really loud and rambunctious on the bus. Grant, a student who doesn't pay attention, cracks jokes, doesn't always turn in homework was sitting quietly without cahtting with others, just playing his hand held video game and minding his own business. I must admit I was very surprised.

I've also noticed that there is a trade off for semantics of homework. I may have mentioned this before, as it bugs me. A teacher can require that homework be in a certain format. Problems in collumns down the left side of the paper, one line between each problem etc. However, that level of detail for homework layout causes confusion and unnecessary 'mistakes' for the kids. It is a trade off though. The homework that is all organized exactly the same is also much easier for the teacher to grade. Is it a fair trade off? Something else that enters into this discussion is whether homework should be given a grade for being done, or if home work should be graded as assessment and given a score out of a total.

Something I noticed just today is that for a warm up, if you plan on going through the problems, more then two questions is too much, you'll spend half the period going over the warm up. Stick to one or two. If the warm up is just to jog their memory, and they won't be correcting it, doing four or 5 problems is acceptable, but then just move on after they have completed it.

Cave Man Day

Things are going much more smoothly with my unit this week. We are way behind where I had planned for us to be, but it's more important that the students are getting this, then that they stay on schedule. My observed lesson on Tuesday went well, all things considered, though I wasn't able to video tape the whole thing (the battery died) I did get the first 15 minutes. I am avoiding watching it because I hate the way my voice sounds recorded.

On Thursday we did a very interesting Prehistoric Man thing. Rather then have 3rd or 4th period, the 6th graders were divided up into clans (Clan of the Cave Bear, Clan of the Saber Tooth Tiger etc.) They rotated through five different stations. One was 'Mammoth hunting", some folks from Doris Ranch had spears with the stick you use to throw them (I can't for the life of me remember the name of it) and were showing the kids how to use them. There was a painting of a Woolly Mammoth on cardboard that they were trying to hit (this activity was out in the field). Also outside was a pavilion under which they were making fire by rubbing sticks together. Indoors there was a 'stick dice' game spread out on furs where depending on which symbols were showing when you threw the sticks you received points. There was also a 'cave painting' activity in which students painted on butcher paper using paint brushes made of sticks and leaves. Finally (the one Mrs. Keener and I were in charge of) there was totem making. Students used clay to create pendants with the image of their clan's animal.

Now Mrs. Keener is not a social studies teacher, and doesn't really know much about the stone age (or claim to know). About halfway through the activity she asked me if I knew what the totems were for. I replied that they were a spiritual or religious symbol. That people believed that the spirits protected them and had power. During the next rotation, Mrs. Keener proceeded to use that as part of her introduction to the activity, but in my opinion, she took it a step too far. First of all she used a subjective second person present tense. "You all worship your totem, you will make a pendant to celebrate your totem". After telling them what they are going to do and how they are feeling about it, she led them through this mock prayer to the great spirit type thing. It made me feel really uncomfortable. This kids may have thought it was silly, and she may have thought she was adding meaning, but it seemed inappropriate. She could have discussed the issue in a more third person objective way. I was afraid that those children who's parents are very religious from a mainstream religion might be offended or angry, thinking that the teacher was promoting paganism of some sort. And those children who may be Pagan or Wiccan or something might be offended that their religious views (totemism, shamanism, natural spirits etc.) were being mocked. No win for anyone! I'm glad she decided to try and educate the kids a little more about what they were doing and why, but she could have chosen a more sensitive way of doing it.

My unit begins

I administered my pre-test on Monday, and started my unit on Tuesday. As I've mentioned before I have about ten kids in my class that I've never had before. All of the kids in my class are at or above where they should be as far as the material I will be teaching. There are two students that lack the confidence in their math skills that would allow them to excel, even though they both scored above average on their pre-test and have showed ample progress throughout the term. On the day we switched one girl came up to me after the switch had occurred. Even though I had told everyone before that the people staying with me would be doing a little more advanced, slightly accelerated math, and the kids with my partner teacher would be doing a little more practice, she needed to reconfirm for herself, "Is this the higher math class, am I supposed to be here?" This girl fits the stereotype for a 'popular' attractive young girl, and she receives extra scaffolding in reading. She has told me before that math is hard for her, which I told her was good thing, it meant she was learning.

I have to admit, my first two lessons were really discouraging. The students were well behaved, they respected me and participated in the discussions I attempted to instigate. But it was all really deadpan. No one seemed like they were having any fun. I don't know if it's me, or the material, or my methods, or them or what. When I have taught lessons before, like when there was a substitute, I felt confident, the kids were engaged and teaching energized me. This was just draining. Part of my problem was that during Wednesday's lesson, I got confused and switched up a few of the examples that I had planned to use that day, and some that I was planing to use on Monday. Not only that, but no one had told me that due to an assembly it was a shorter time period then normal. Due to that I am now about a half a class period behind. It shouldn't make too much difference, I just may not quite be to the lesson on Tuesday that I was planning to teach for my first observation. We will have to see how things go on Monday, and how far we get. I could take extra time on Monday, and then teach what was originally Monday's lesson on Tuesday. Or I could try and move through it really quickly and 'catch up' for Tuesday. Tuesday is designed to be further exploration of the concepts introduced on Monday, so it might work either way. I will have to look more at the two potential lesson plans before I make up my mind.

Frustrations and Challenges

People get stressed out about things. Sounds obvious, but I've had several examples for me of people stressing, and affecting their choices and behaviors. One person is faced with a situation that seems to me like she is being asked to do something she knows how to do, but asked to do it a different way. A stressful and frustrating situation, no doubt. However, she has chosen (in the instance to which I was witness) to deal with the stress by taking a superior and exasperated attitude and tone of voice, and demanding answers to her questions, in specifics immediately. No doubt she deserves answers, and is justly frustrated. But it seemed like the way that she went about attempting to get those answers was counter productive to the specific situations, as well as putting the person she was asking on the spot, and in what could potentially have been an uncomfortable situation.

In a similar vein, but a different situation, I know that my Co-op teacher has been under a lot of stress in her personal life, things I won't go into. I have noticed they she seems to allow this to affect the way in which she interacts with students. Now I'm sure this is unavoidable in some situations, and obviously no one can completely control themselves, nor is anyone perfect. But things that she might tolerate under ordinary circumstances she reacts more strictly to. Students whose jokes and clowning she might laugh at, not get them a trip outside the door for a minute to calm down. Let me clarify, that I don't think she is over reacting to any of these off task behaviors, on the contrary, I think it is good that she is beginning to disallow some of the messing around. But, she is making a change in the way she deals with things, which might be difficult for students to adjust to. I imagine it is very difficult to avoid doing this sort of thing to a certain extent, so we will see how I do at this next month. I already know that there is one student in particular who annoys me so much I have no paitence for off task behavior from her, that I might tolerate in another student, and i have to work very hard to combat that, and not allow it to show.

The moral of the story is to find healthy ways to deal with frustration, or to not let things get to you at all. I'm trying, but I can always use more practice.

I ran into one other big challenge this week, as I was preparing to start my unit. This one has to do with teaching cooperatively with partner teachers, etc. But first a little bit of background. We have heterogeneous math classes, meaning there is no high and low class, it's a mix of all levels. However, we are still expected to differentiate for a multitude of student levels and abilities. In order to do that, one strategy that my school is implying is some splitting of the classes. So I will have half of my kids, and half of Mr. Smith's kids for a period of time, and then we will divide again, differently, or go back to the original classes. I'm not entirely sure how the whole thing will work, I'm just doing what they say, since I don't really have any clout in the matter. One of the biggest challenges of doing this though, is the two classes must absolutely stay 100% together, and must be consistent with what they teach. When you have one teacher for a whole year, it's ok to do something a little non-traditionally, or quirky, if it's what that teacher expects. But switching back and forth every few weeks, we have to have consistency. Now here comes the issue. When I learned to perform operations on fractions, we wrote the problem out horizontally, all on one line. We then did computations below and around the original problem. The way they do fractions at Briggs, is straight up and down, with the fractions stacked, you do the work only to the right of the problem. I've never seen this before. In fact, I wouldn't know about it now except I asked Mr. Smith to look over the pre-test I wrote up (since his students would take the same test too) and he told me to change some of them to that direction. I have found that it's been really tough for me to simply change the direction that I write equations. It makes sense, I understand it (though I like my way better), but I am going to have to be keeping myself in check for the next few weeks as I write equations out, that I am consistent with what the students have already learned, and will continue to learn after my unit is done.

Backing Up

There are two things in my notes, that I have failed to blog about. As follows:

September 30th
I observed Laura Scruggs. She was the first person at Briggs I found I really liked (she is the one who complemented my hair!). She teaches 7th grade Social Studies and Language Arts, she is the teacher we worked with for our time line, and is Melissa's cooperating teacher. She is ex-military, and Denis, our VP insisted that all of us make a point of ovserving her.

Apparantly I observed her on a good day, the students were more well behaved then usual. The group in her morning class are particularly challanging. I hear there are several IEP kids, as well as other behavior issues. The afternoon group for her is the 'Algebra class', and so there is a smaller percentage of high flying kids in her morning class as well.

The day I observed they were presenting interviews they had done with a student and were imitating that student in an effort to get the class to guess who they had interviewed. The biggest thing I notcied at first is how different this class was then my own. Part of it is that perhaps this class is just more difficult in general, there is the 7th grade Algebra class during this time period, so none of the 'high fliers' are in the class at all. On the other hand, I have heard from many people that seventh grade is the hardest, and that they are the meanest.

The activity that they were doing was presenting an interview that they had done of another student. They spoke as if they were the interviewee, and then the rest of the class had to guess who it was. In addition to the verbal information, many students also did a physical imitation of their persion. The class thought the whole thing was pretty funny and were fully of snickers and giggles. They laughed at the reason that people recieved the name that they did, and at the hobbies people put down and in general were not respectful. Mrs. Scruggs was frequently having to remind them; "Attention to the front, please".
It seems like the seventh graders are a lot more self conscious then the sixth graders. They are more nervous about presenting, and seem more afraid that what they do won't be ok. Less of a willingness to try.

When things started to get out of hand, and the kids couldn't focus at all, Mrs. Scruggs told them to stop, and take a break, but not leave the room. I thought this was a good idea. It gives kids the opportunity to stretch their legs and get some f the antseyness out without spreading the kids out and loosing track of them. When the break was over, she ws easily able to countdown from ten, and the students went back to their seats. During the break I noticed that the class immediatly split into the girls and boys sides of the room.

Later on during the interview process Mrs. Scruggs interrupted the class and very pointedly said "Some of you are being rude". This seems like the sort of tactic I would try and employ, although I'm not convinced that it was an effective one...

Soon after that they changed activities. Mrs. Scruggs had them pull out their spirals. She had a set up for the spirals that I hadn't seen before. They had a table of contents, and had numbered their pages, so there was a limited amount of space for each entry. But, they also knew exactly where to look in order to find their notes on a certain subject.

Today they were doing an activity called 'Hit the Bridge'. Using bridge words, or conjunctions. She had the acronym (fons BAY) to stand for the words, the capitals being the most commonly used. The then spent some time writting compund sentances and using examples of all of the different conjunctions.

In the middle of the explanation her overhead projector broke. She very smoothly moved to using the white board instead.

In order to integrate this lesson with the social studies she had been doing she had them use topics from the timeline that they had been making.

The lesson was effective and efficient, if not perhaps the most enojoyable for the students. And she maintained control of her classroom at all times.