Tone

I have a student in my junior American Lit class who often likes to test my limits. Let's call him "Tone" for the sake of our cyber- conversation. Tone is an all around nice guy. He likes to make people laugh, but is by no means a class clown. Tone just likes to socialize. When I first took over the class, Tone was respectful of me, but often disrupted the class with his constant conversation with his neighbors. He really isn't much of a distraction during class discussions, possibly trying to lay low so I won't call on him. He seems to mainly want to talk to his neighbors when sstudents are supposed to be work independently and quietly.
I orginally thought maybe the problem stemmed from my master teacher's seating aarrangement. At the beginning of the school year she allowed students to chooose their own seats, so you can imagine where all the high and low achieving students decided to sit. in addition to that, there were also a few groups of friends that gathered together. One of those groups included Tone and his friends. At this point, Tone was not the only student that was a distraction to the class due to talking. I warned the class and let them know that if things didn't change, I was going to change the seating arrangement. Understandably, they were against that option. After two weeks, I decided that the best thing for the class was to change the seating arrangement. The new seating chart was almost in alphabetical order, with some students stategically placed. The new seating arrangement seemed to curb most of the distractive talking. Except for Tone.
Even though most of freinds were across the room, Tone has taken to talking to his friends from across the room. Again, never during class discussions, only during independent work sessions. As of lately, when I ask him to stop, he becomes somewhat confrontational. Nothing disrespectful, just always having something to say. Today I decided I needed to pull him aside and talk to him away from the rest of the class. I told him that I understood that he likes to socialize, but he needs to help me by being less distracting during class. But what really got his attention, is when I mentioned calling home. All in all, he said there would be less chatter from his side. I'm interested to see how things go tomorrow.

I'm a STAR!

These past two weeks we have been administering the STAR exams at Westmoor HS. The past two weeks have been challenging to me due to the block schedules that have been in effect during the testing. I have been a substitute at a school that had block schedules, but it wasn't up to me to come up with the lesson plans. Normally Westmoor has 55 minute periods, but with the block schedule the periods were about 80 minutes long. In order to prepare for these block periods, I decided to over prepare. Although I have enough content to cover the block, I still feel rushed because I want to fit everythng in the allotted time. Due to the scheduling, my classes only meet every other day, so although our meetings are longer, our time together for the week is ultimately shorter. With this in mind, I am forced to give the students more homework. I found it interesting that on our first day back to the normal schedule, I ran out of time during my lesson. I guess what i've llearned from this experience is that yoou must be flexible with these types of standardized tests. I felt like I had a sort of routine down with my students, and then a "monkey wrench" seemed to be thrown into my plans wwith these tests. I'm sure once i've been teaching for a while these tests won't be such a distraction, but for now they've really thrown me for a looop.

playin games

Yesterday i played a pretty fun game with my junior English class I thought I might share. The game is called "stump the teacher" and I use it to review study questions and vocabulary. I'm sure it can be adapted to use with any subject or questions. Before the game starts i have the students come up with two or three questions based on some sort of popular culture (e.g. music, movies, TV, art). The class is then divided depending on the size. I found that four or five groups works well for a class of thirty or so students. A fewer number of groups will keep the game moving swiftly. Each group then chooses a team spokesperson and a name. i usually write the team names on the board to keep track of the points. Before starting the game I explain: 1. Only the spokesperson can give an answer, although the spokesperson can delegate that duty to another member. 2 Anyone calling out answers will cause their team to lose a turn. 3 You have thirty seconds to discuss the answer.
The game starts by me asking the first group a question, if they get it correct they recieve a point and a chance to stump the teacher by asking one of their prepared pop culture questions. If they do indeed stump the teacher, they recieve an additional point. If the teacher answers correctly, they recieve only the first point. If the team answers the study question incorrectly, the next group has a chance to answer it and stump the teacher. The game is really fun if it's moving at a quick pace and it also allows you to cover more material.
This game is fun because it gives students a chance to ask their teacher questions and see what they reallly know. it also gives students a chance to discuss relevant information with their peers. I usually play this game for extra credit points and maybe give the winning team a few extra points or something.

Lots of planning.

I apologize to my critical friends for putting off posting for so long, but I've felt somewhat overwhelmed lately. As I stated in my previous post, i just started with two new classes this semester. On Monday I just started a new unit with my junior American Lit class (Bless Me, Ultima) and I've been busy planning. I began by giving them an assignment where they research both sides of their family to explore the differences and similarities. They are supposed to interview parents and do internet research in order to find specific details. I hoping this assignment will help them relate to the main character in the book who often feels torn between both sides of his family. most of the students seem to be on task today in the computer lab; I hope that is a sign of their interest.
My freshman class is still not completely mine. My master teacher wants to finish the Romeo and Juliet unit before I take over the class completely. I'm glad we're team-teaching at this point; I hate teaching Shakespeare. I'm supposed to be planning a unit for Ender's Game. It's going slow. Many of the boys in the class seem really interrested, the girls, not so much. Hopefully I can find some ways to keep them both engaged.

let's get started

This semester is off to a rough start. I had to change high schools two weeks into the semester due to scheduling conflicts. It's all good. I'm trying to keep a good attitude about the whole situation. Here's to a good a semester.