September 20-24th, 2010

On Monday, we had a meeting with a parent about a student on our team. He has been low performing and just not with us mentally in class. After reviewing his file, we discovered that this is not normal behavior for him. He has been an A, B student in the past and never had any complaints about his attention. He has suffered a tragic event over the summer, a death of immediate family member and we knew that this was on his mind. We called the meeting to talk with his parent to see what we could do to help him. It was a very emotional conference to say the least. We discovered that he loves talking about his loved one and that is how he is grieving. Also, we learned that he loves motor cross. After finding out these two facts about him, we are now able to think of ways to keep him engaged or just feel like we really care about his situation and what he is going through.
In Science on Monday, we continued our unit on Measurement. We learned about the SI units (metric system). I could not get the students to understand that we do not use the English system in Science. I thought that the lesson went fairly well, but I know that there a lot of things that I could have done differently. For example, I should have used concrete objects to explain the different quanities and units, such as length and meter. I could have showed students a meter stick and explained to them that this is how we measure length. I could have even taken that farther and discussed centimeters and milimeters. My reasoning for not doing this in the first place was that throughout this unit we will be covering all of these quantities and discussing each in detail. I realize now that students probably would have had a better understanding if I did a general overview that first day of SI units.
On Tuesday, we had a 504 meeting with a student's parents. She has brittle bone disease and is very fragile. We were thinking of ways that we can make her life easier. We decided that we would send home an extra copy of the textbooks so that she didn't have to carry them back and forth. This seemed to be the best solution. We also discussed many other things that would work well for her, but she is a very independent girl and doesn't want the attention. She realizes that she is different from the other students and does not want attention brought to her.
Also, today I dealt with my first puking in the classroom incident. A little girl came up to me and said she wasn't feeling well so I told her to go to the nurse. She didn't want to miss class so she said she would go after. First mistake on my part, I allowed her to stay. No more than five minutes later she was standing over the garbage can throwing up. I thought for sure there was going to be a chain reaction. I ran her as quickly as I could to the bathroom and sent a student in with her while I ran to the nurse to let her know what was going on. Needless to say, she ended up going home. It was quite an experience to deal with, especially when the sub and I had no idea what to do.
In Science today, we continued our unit on Measurement. In the beginning of class, students had a bell ringer. It required them to fill in the missing parts of the SI unit charts. I didn't allow them to use their study guide because they were informed yesterday that they needed to start studying. Also, I wanted to see how much they retained from the day before. This bellringer turned into a 20 minute thing. The students were trying to hard to recall the information, but it just wasn't there. After the bell ringer, we went right into length. We talked about meters, centimeters, and millimeters. Students completed a hands-on activity called: How do you measure up? Students were required to measure themselves with tape measurers. They had to do everything in centimeters. Before measuring, they had to estimate. Their estimations were pretty far off, but that is because they haven't really dealt with centimeters before. Many of the students approached me and said that this is the best activity they have done all year! This made extremely thrilled.
On Wednesday, we had a two hour early release day. I ended up completely changing my lesson plans for today to fit the 35 minute class periods. In reading, I assigned students a family portrait and write up and allowed them to work on this during class. In our book, The Summer of the Swans, there are very little details provided about what the characters look like. I wanted the students to get creative and draw what they think the characters looked like and then I wanted them to tell me why they looked this way. The students did an excellent job on this!
In Science, I allowed students to continue working on their How do you measure up? worksheets because many of them did not get past the estimate phase of the assignment. They had a lot of fun doing this and I felt as if it was a less stressful assignment to do in a short amount of time. The students worked really well and seemed to really enjoy it for the second day.
On Thursday, we got caught up on chapters in Reading. Although, all of my teachers have told me in classes not to use popcorn reading, I did (ooops)! In my opinion, it worked out great! Everyone in the class had a chance to read and it forced them to follow along because they had no idea when they could be called on. I was really surprised that it worked out the way it did because for the first time I was able to hear how everyone was able to read. I usually don't put students on the spot to read because I understand some students have anxiety about reading aloud, but this seemed to work out okay and everyone did great!
In Science, we had our SI units quiz. This quiz took almost the entire period. I was not expecting it to take this long at all! At this point in the week, I was still unfinished with what I had planned for Tuesday so I was hoping that this quiz would only take about 15 minutes and we could move on. Again, I needed to rethink my lesson plans. As students finished, I gave them a measuring worksheet where they practiced using centimeters and milimeters. It all worked out in the end, but we were still days behind.
After the students left, we had Faculty Senate. During this, teachers presented ways that they were using technology in the classroom. The one that I enjoyed the most and became very interested in was the use of Google Earth. I never realized that students could go on there and take a 3-d tour of building and landforms. I think that this would be extremely interesting and engaging for students. I have started thinking about when I go back to Suncrest and do my Mexico unit. I think that this would be interesting for students.
On Friday, students in reading, completed a bell ringer that again turned into a 20 minute thing. It wasn't such a big deal though because this is stuff that they need to know and I wanted them to take their time working on it. After their bell ringer, they partner read Chapter 15 in the book and then discussed it with their partner.
In Science, we finally finished Tuesday's lesson on volume. Students seemed to really enjoy this lesson. We discussed the two ways to measure volume, the meniscus, a graduated cylinder, milileters, immersion, and displacement. We then did a lab where students saw first hand how to measure volume and displacement.
While thinking about my lesson plans for next week, I came up with many hands-on activities for next week. I am so excited. In reading, I am going to have students create a life size game board of the obstacles that Charlie faces while he is lost in the woods on his way to the lake. I am not quite sure how I want to do this yet so I have this weekend to figure it all out. Also, I am going to have the students pretend to news reporters and interview a character in our book about the disappearance of Charlie. The students will work in pairs and will be video taped. I think that they will really enjoy these activities.
I think that everything is going really well provided the circumstances. Although I am often overwhelmed with school, work, and taking on the responsibilities of my teacher, I am really enjoying myself. I am going to be so upset when I have to hand the teaching over to my sub. I really enjoy working with the students and I am learning something new everyday. This has been such an amazing experience for me and I wouldn't do anything to change it.

September 13-17, 2010

This week was my first week with my new subsititute, Jessica Sandy. We believe that she is going to be the long-term subsititute in the classroom. Everything went very smoothy. She is very personable and easy to get along with. I like doing partner reading during Reading class because I think it gives the students a break from listening to me read, but I have noticed that not all of the students are always reading when I allow them to do this. It is starting to make me think that I should not allow them to do this anymore. Last Friday, I had a big issue with students turning in Science homework. To my shock, all students except for 1 returned all papers to me on Monday! On Tuesday, I ran out of things to do in Reading! I always overplan so I decided to take one activity out this week and to my surprise we actually needed it! In Science, we had a vocabulary quiz which students have been preparing for for a long time. Many of the students did not do very well on it and I know it is simply because they did not study. It really upsets me because I want to see my students succeed, but I can't hold their hand at night and make them study. Also, I noticed that I have this one girl who is really struggling in Science. I asked her to come see me during AA on Tuesday so that I could help her. You can tell that she does not have that solid support system at home and doesn't get all the help that she needs. She was so grateful! I was very pleased with how well she did on her worksheet after our one-on-one tutoring session. I feel like my experiences these past two weeks (by taking on the role of the classroom teacher) have really forced me to grow up and become that teacher figure. Although, I am still learning everyday, I think that I am doing a good job and the students are helping me through this and being very patient with me. By Wednesday of this week, I saw a complete turn around in many of my students. In reading, the students were participating like they have never participated before. In Science, students had a test and then we made Get Well cards for Mrs. Starkey. I got to see a side of my students that is rarely seen within the regular classroom. They really let their creativity shine through. This is the most dedicated work I have seen any of my students do thus far. The cards turn out amazing! I know that Mrs. Starkey is really going to enjoy them! On Thursday, we started Chapter 2 on Measurement in Science. After seeing many of the results on Chapter 1's test, I am really freaking out. This chapter is on my shoulders and I need to teach the students to the best of my ability to improve these test scores. Measurement is not an easy thing to teach students when you haven't had to sit down and think about how you are going to teach all of these concepts. It is going to take a lot of preparation. Today was Picture Day and boy was it crazy. When I was told not to plan anything, they were right! There were interruptions every 2 minutes with kids getting called out to go get their pictures taken. Of course, I taught a new concept in Science today and the students really needed to learn it. Luckily, it didn't affect any of my periods other than fourth. I have been preparing to teach this lesson all week because I was unsure of how to actually teach it to the students to allow them to understand it. I taught precision and accuracy, rounding, and significant digits. I was all ready to teach it and had all of my thoughts together and knew exactly what I was going to say until it actually came time to teach it. Third period was a disaster! I was stumbling over words and really struggling on how to get my point across. Fourth period was a little better. Sixth period was even better, but seventh period was by far the best. I finally had all of my thoughts together and definitely rocked the socks off of that lesson! I think that I need to revisit this lesson on Monday and explain it a little bit better to my other classes now that I have figured it all out! This week has definitely been a challenge, but it has been a great experience. I am learning a lot about myself as a teacher and I am constantly learning from my students and learning more about my students. I really enjoy full time teaching!

September 7-10, 2010

This week was extremely challenging. My mentor teacher had a medical emergency on Monday and will no longer be able to be in the classroom. I did not find out until Tuesday morning what had happened. I was asked to take over full time, which I was planning on doing next week anyways so I wasn't too thrown off. I just didn't feel prepared to teach on Tuesday and it definetly showed. My first period of Science was a disaster, but I quickly learned from my mistakes and the remaining three periods of Science seemed to flow smoothly. Wednesday was much better. I felt way more prepared and had no problems teaching at all. I quickly became stressed and overwhelmed with the amount of work that students were turning in and the amount of things that needed to be graded and returned. On top of classes, attending extra curricular activities, and teaching full time, I found very little time to do anything. I don't know how we are supposed to fit everything in! I barely even had enough time to plan for next week. Today was the first day I had time to actually sit down and think about next week. This week, I have been struggling a lot with the seating arrangements and behavior issues. I think it is because they know that Mrs. Starkey is not here and I am the one they have to deal with. It is not so much that they are testing me because they know when its time to stop, I just think that they are not yet adjusted to the change. After several days of planning out and rethinking seating charts, I think I finally got it right! Today was the best day for behavior yet! There is still some minimal talking, but it is nearly impossible to stop all conversations. By far, today was the WORST day for homework!!! I had 18 out of my 79 students not turn in homework today! I was completely shocked. I told them that they have until Monday to turn it in, but they will lose 10 points. Also, I made sure to mention that after Monday, I will not accept it and this will never happen again. They will be sent to homework detention next time it happens. Although, I am more stressed out than I have ever been teaching wise, I am loving teaching full time. The students are treating me more like a teacher and not just a "helper." Also, I have pretty much assumed all responsibilities a teacher would. I have been grading all papers, putting them in the grade book, discussing student issues and what not. I have to admit this week has been an amazing experience. It was very unexpected, but I think that I adjusted extremely well to the situation. I hope that everything goes okay with Mrs. Starkey and that she makes a full and safe recovery!

Week of 8/30/10-9/3/10

This week, I completely took over Reading. We started a novel, The Summer of the Swans. At the beginning of the week, the students in my class were really trying to see how far they could push me. It took them the entire 45 minutes to write in their journal and define 7 words! After that, I thought that it was going to take me months to finish this book. Tuesday went a lot smoother than Monday did. We ended up getting caught up on everything that I had planned. I noticed that participation is a HUGE issue in my classroom. The students just aren't willing to do it. As much as I hate putting students on the spot, I decided that I had to make popsicle sticks with each students name on it. Whenever the students refused to participate, I would just go to the sticks and pull a name. It actually worked quite well, but the students still are not participating because they want to. In addition to the popsicle sticks, I decided to make a participation chart. I have been marking how often the students are participating each day. I think right now it is more for me so that I can see who is participating all of the time and who is not, but in the future I might make it count towards their grade. I am not sure if I want to do that though. My class on Wednesday was such an improvement! They worked so well and participated so much more. I am not sure what happened overnight, but it was a miracle. On Thursday, the students presented their interviews of their parents or a relative from the night before. The interviews were meant to be about life in the 60s or 70s. The students really seemed to enjoy this because they learned alot about their parents/relatives. It was very interesting to consider how much things have changed in the past 30 or 40 some years. We have also thought about creating posters for the 60s, 70s, and today so that students can compare prices and life styles and what not. I think the students would really enjoy doing something like this, but when do I fit it in? We are already a day or a day and a half behind! Then, we played a review game. Students broke up into teams and worked together to answer the questions. It went very well and the students really enjoyed it. It was something different than reading or me standing in front of them and talking. Finally, today we had our quiz. I made the mistake of not having the students move their desks back out of their groups! Lesson learned that is for sure. I had one group blatantly copy off of each other because they all had the same answer for the one question and it was no where near correct! Next time, I will definetly have them move away from each other. I am really enjoying being in 6th grade. Also, every day I feel more and more a part of the school community. Everyone is so welcoming and so willing to help all of the time. I am looking forward to continuing my novel next week! Also, I am looking forward to taking over more responsibility, such as team teaching in Science!