Day 7:
Agenda-
Homeroom
Class: Creative Writing
Class: Pre AP Sophomores
Class: AP Lit Seniors
Lunch
Study Hall
Today was the start of a new semester. This means that we got to finally start our new elective, Creative Writing. It was so much fun! We are doing a create your own world theme so all of the writing is going to be about a fantasy/ sci-fi world that the students get to make up. Then they get to make characters and write stories about what happens when these characters interact. The kids were pumped to get started. The whole time we were explain the wiki we are using to hold all of the writings they were asking when they could get started creating. And they are all just bursting with ideas on what their world should be like. I wish that every class could be like that. That every class I taught could be enthused or at least interested in what we were doing. Maybe we should not have so many classes be mandatory. Or maybe we should come up with a way to make classes that kids who don’t typically like the subject will like. For example, I don’t like science and I avoid taking science classes but if there was a science class similar to myth busters I would be all over it. Or a math class that involved writing. Something like that, this way kids could enjoy learning a little more. I just feel like school isn’t fun and in many ways it should be. Having fun encourages learning, increases a positive mood, makes kids like school and inspires creativity. Why can’t we do more to encourage that?
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Day 6: Core Beliefs and Class Time
Day 6:
Agenda-
Staff meeting
Class: Pre-AP Sophomores
Free period for rubric planning
Class: AP Lit Senior
Lunch
Prep Period
Homeroom
Today the students worked on their papers during class time. They are being given a lot of time in class to work on these papers. And I am curious as to why. I never got so much time to work on papers in class. I am sure the students are working on the papers or most of them are anyway but it still seems like a lot of class time. Today was a shortened day for the students but the staff needed to be there at the normal time so that we could have a meeting. We were going over our core belief statements. A lot of the ones that were proposed were alike. It seemed to me that they all said the same thing or were very similar. They didn’t mean a lot to me or to any of the people in the room. There was a lot of discussion over what we could do to make them more meaningful and less redundant. It is amazing how picky we have to be about words in our line of work! Everyone at the meeting was concerned about not offending anyone, making sure everyone was included and everyone had something they wanted to make sure was in there. Why is it like that? Why can’t our belief statements be simple, to the point and meaningful. Less wordy.
Agenda-
Staff meeting
Class: Pre-AP Sophomores
Free period for rubric planning
Class: AP Lit Senior
Lunch
Prep Period
Homeroom
Today the students worked on their papers during class time. They are being given a lot of time in class to work on these papers. And I am curious as to why. I never got so much time to work on papers in class. I am sure the students are working on the papers or most of them are anyway but it still seems like a lot of class time. Today was a shortened day for the students but the staff needed to be there at the normal time so that we could have a meeting. We were going over our core belief statements. A lot of the ones that were proposed were alike. It seemed to me that they all said the same thing or were very similar. They didn’t mean a lot to me or to any of the people in the room. There was a lot of discussion over what we could do to make them more meaningful and less redundant. It is amazing how picky we have to be about words in our line of work! Everyone at the meeting was concerned about not offending anyone, making sure everyone was included and everyone had something they wanted to make sure was in there. Why is it like that? Why can’t our belief statements be simple, to the point and meaningful. Less wordy.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Day 5: More Tests and More Surveys
Day 5:
Agenda-
Homeroom
Class: Research Writing
Class: Pre AP Sophomores
Class: AP Lit Seniors
Lunch
Study Hall
Today was another day of testing and grading. I took the time to work on my lesson plans and on my contextual analysis paper and a little on the wiki for the creative writing class we will have soon. I had the students take my surveys after they were done with their tests. So now I will have even more data to work with. Overall there have been a lot more linguistic kids now that I have given it to more students. It doesn’t really surprise me since they are all in AP or Pre AP. To be in those classes I would imagine that you would need some natural talent in English. The most interesting thing is that Interpersonal and Intrapersonal are almost evenly split down the middle. I wasn’t expecting that to happen. It will make classes interesting since I will have to decide if I should do group work or individual work. I wonder why the scores are so even like that. Maybe it has to do with the technology age? I suppose kids are doing more reflecting on themselves since blogs and twitter are so popular. But they are also plugged into their friends all the time because of cell phones, facebook and other social networking sites. It makes it easy to always be communicating with someone. I am looking forward to using this information in the classroom. I think it will be fun to try and incorporate their strengths and their interests into the class.
Agenda-
Homeroom
Class: Research Writing
Class: Pre AP Sophomores
Class: AP Lit Seniors
Lunch
Study Hall
Today was another day of testing and grading. I took the time to work on my lesson plans and on my contextual analysis paper and a little on the wiki for the creative writing class we will have soon. I had the students take my surveys after they were done with their tests. So now I will have even more data to work with. Overall there have been a lot more linguistic kids now that I have given it to more students. It doesn’t really surprise me since they are all in AP or Pre AP. To be in those classes I would imagine that you would need some natural talent in English. The most interesting thing is that Interpersonal and Intrapersonal are almost evenly split down the middle. I wasn’t expecting that to happen. It will make classes interesting since I will have to decide if I should do group work or individual work. I wonder why the scores are so even like that. Maybe it has to do with the technology age? I suppose kids are doing more reflecting on themselves since blogs and twitter are so popular. But they are also plugged into their friends all the time because of cell phones, facebook and other social networking sites. It makes it easy to always be communicating with someone. I am looking forward to using this information in the classroom. I think it will be fun to try and incorporate their strengths and their interests into the class.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Day 4: Survey Says...
Day 4:
Agenda-
Homeroom
Class: Pre AP Sophomores
Free Period to Work on School Wide Rubrics
Class: AP Lit Seniors
Lunch
Prep Period
Today I did a little bit of teaching. I gave the class two surveys. The first one was to figure out what their multiple intelligences were and the second one was to find out what kinds of things they were interested in, how old they were, what languages they spoke and what they were good at. It is a start towards getting to know the students better. I was surprised by the number of students in my sophomore class who were musical. I really shouldn’t have been though. I have been observing that a number of them wear headphones while they are working on their writing projects during class time. I think that I am going to try and incorporate that into their final projects for the Macbeth unit I am starting to work on. Maybe add a musical element to the project or maybe give them an option to do an adaptation of Macbeth or a song. I don’t know. They are also really interpersonal so I am thinking there will be a lot of group work during class time to supplement along with the play. I am already starting to use the data to think about what things will work for this class.
Agenda-
Homeroom
Class: Pre AP Sophomores
Free Period to Work on School Wide Rubrics
Class: AP Lit Seniors
Lunch
Prep Period
Today I did a little bit of teaching. I gave the class two surveys. The first one was to figure out what their multiple intelligences were and the second one was to find out what kinds of things they were interested in, how old they were, what languages they spoke and what they were good at. It is a start towards getting to know the students better. I was surprised by the number of students in my sophomore class who were musical. I really shouldn’t have been though. I have been observing that a number of them wear headphones while they are working on their writing projects during class time. I think that I am going to try and incorporate that into their final projects for the Macbeth unit I am starting to work on. Maybe add a musical element to the project or maybe give them an option to do an adaptation of Macbeth or a song. I don’t know. They are also really interpersonal so I am thinking there will be a lot of group work during class time to supplement along with the play. I am already starting to use the data to think about what things will work for this class.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Day 3: Snow Day!!!
There were no classes today do to the snow. Snow day!! May work on some lesson plans!
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Day 2: Midterms
Day 2:
Agenda-
Homeroom
Class: Pre AP Sophomores
Class: Mythology
Class: AP Lit Seniors
Lunch
Prep Period
Today the two English classes that run year-long had midterms. The kids were all fairly quiet and well behaved while taking the test and while waiting for their classmates to finish. It was obviously a pretty boring day since all we did was administer the tests, walk around checking on kids and grade. We got all the tests thus far graded. None of the kids got every single question right which surprised me. I would have thought that at least one of them would have gotten them all right. Nobody in the sophomore class got an A. This also surprised me I would have thought that at least one would. My mentor suggested that it is probably because the kids just haven’t developed the studying skills yet. I wonder though. I don’t remember ever really doing any learning on how to study. We did a lot of test prep in the AP classes to get ready for the AP tests and we did a lot of test prep in 8th grade for the MEAs. But I don’t remember ever actually being told how to study. I wonder if maybe we shouldn’t assume kids know. Maybe this is something we need to teach more formally and specifically. I know it is hard to do though because people study and learn differently but teachers already have to take into account the different ways kids learn. This shouldn’t be any different. Besides, what purpose do midterms serve anyway? Are they actually testing kids on what they know or are they testing kids on how to take a test? I feel like it is more the last one. And that may be an important skill to have if you plan on taking more tests later but I am much more concerned about making sure they learn the material. Maybe it is just me being biased because I hated midterms and finals in high school because of how much they could hurt my grade. I just remember working hard all year in my hard classes to get an A and then taking the test and having it drop me down to a B. How is that fair? I didn’t see any of that happening to the kids in these classes today luckily but I think that it is still a valid point How is it ok that one test can ruin your hard work you did all year?
Agenda-
Homeroom
Class: Pre AP Sophomores
Class: Mythology
Class: AP Lit Seniors
Lunch
Prep Period
Today the two English classes that run year-long had midterms. The kids were all fairly quiet and well behaved while taking the test and while waiting for their classmates to finish. It was obviously a pretty boring day since all we did was administer the tests, walk around checking on kids and grade. We got all the tests thus far graded. None of the kids got every single question right which surprised me. I would have thought that at least one of them would have gotten them all right. Nobody in the sophomore class got an A. This also surprised me I would have thought that at least one would. My mentor suggested that it is probably because the kids just haven’t developed the studying skills yet. I wonder though. I don’t remember ever really doing any learning on how to study. We did a lot of test prep in the AP classes to get ready for the AP tests and we did a lot of test prep in 8th grade for the MEAs. But I don’t remember ever actually being told how to study. I wonder if maybe we shouldn’t assume kids know. Maybe this is something we need to teach more formally and specifically. I know it is hard to do though because people study and learn differently but teachers already have to take into account the different ways kids learn. This shouldn’t be any different. Besides, what purpose do midterms serve anyway? Are they actually testing kids on what they know or are they testing kids on how to take a test? I feel like it is more the last one. And that may be an important skill to have if you plan on taking more tests later but I am much more concerned about making sure they learn the material. Maybe it is just me being biased because I hated midterms and finals in high school because of how much they could hurt my grade. I just remember working hard all year in my hard classes to get an A and then taking the test and having it drop me down to a B. How is that fair? I didn’t see any of that happening to the kids in these classes today luckily but I think that it is still a valid point How is it ok that one test can ruin your hard work you did all year?
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
My First Day
Day 1:
Agenda-
Class: Pre AP Sophmore English
Class: AP Lit Senior English
Lunch
Study Hall
Homeroom
Today was a good day. I got to meet two of the classes that I will have all year. It was a fairly laid back day for the most part. The first class had a vocab quiz and then they worked on their fairy tales. They were talkative and active but for the most part they seemed on task. Many of them had already done a lot of work on it. The second class also took a vocab test but after that they played a game to review for their midterm. The class was very enthusiastic to play and very competitive. This group is very high energy and it will be fun to see how that comes out in other projects and assignments throughout the year. All of the kids seemed very friendly. Homeroom was a little different because they were freshmen. They were definitely more rambunctious but none more so than one boy who could not stop pretending to beat his friend up or bouncing in his chair. I wish that homeroom time could be used to keep the kid entertained and learning rather than having to tell him 50 times to stop bothering his friend. Maybe I can come up with something. Overall though today was a good first day.
Agenda-
Class: Pre AP Sophmore English
Class: AP Lit Senior English
Lunch
Study Hall
Homeroom
Today was a good day. I got to meet two of the classes that I will have all year. It was a fairly laid back day for the most part. The first class had a vocab quiz and then they worked on their fairy tales. They were talkative and active but for the most part they seemed on task. Many of them had already done a lot of work on it. The second class also took a vocab test but after that they played a game to review for their midterm. The class was very enthusiastic to play and very competitive. This group is very high energy and it will be fun to see how that comes out in other projects and assignments throughout the year. All of the kids seemed very friendly. Homeroom was a little different because they were freshmen. They were definitely more rambunctious but none more so than one boy who could not stop pretending to beat his friend up or bouncing in his chair. I wish that homeroom time could be used to keep the kid entertained and learning rather than having to tell him 50 times to stop bothering his friend. Maybe I can come up with something. Overall though today was a good first day.
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