October 4-8, 2010

Monday- Today went pretty well. We finished up our life size gameboards today in reading. All of the groups did very well, except for one. Everyone in the group kind of just sat back and let the one girl do all of the work. When it came time to do presentations, all of the group members looked at this girl so that she would talk. This is when I had to interject and tell them that I wanted someone else to talk. All of the other group members were unable to explain anything about the game. This really upset me because not only did it go with the book, but we have spent over a week working on these. This just proved to me that these group members didn't contribute anything to the project. The way that the rubric was set up for this project was so that everyone received a group grade. Because of this one group, I changed it so that each person got his/her own grade. I didn't think that it was fair to penalize the girl who did all of the work because she had no say in her group members. I chose the groups by random selection so that the class got to work with people they wouldn't usually choose to work with. Now I am wondering...is random selection a bad method to use when choosing groups? In Science, we went over our study guide and then did a vocabulary review. After this, I allowed the students to work on the rest of their study guide. I am anxious to see how many students still walk in tomorrow without it done. They were given almost 20 minutes and by the way the students were chatting, not much worked seemed to be getting done. I have to partially blame this on myself though because I know that I should be more strict with them, but I am not the type of person that has to have a quiet classroom. I want the students to be able to interact with each other and work together.

Tuesday- Today we had our Chapter 2 Vocabulary Quiz. I had students walk in and say I didn't know we had a test today! This drives me crazy because we spent majority of class yesterday discussing the quiz and what was going to be on it! I am not sure what else I could do to get students to prepare better for quizzes and tests. I want them to do well, but I can't hold their hands and make them take their stuff home to study.

Wednesday- In Reading, I taught the students a new song to help them with the word onomatopoeia. This song really allowed them to make the connection. By singing it, they learned how to spell it and what it means. In science today we had our chapter 2 test. Third period was a complete disaster. We completely forgot to set up the measurement lab. Also, we hadn't planned how we wanted to do it. By 6th period, we broke it up into stations and had it all figured out. third and fourth period ended up being our test dummies. Sixth and Seventh period's measurement labs were smooth sailing. I can't even count how many students asked me if they were to use centimeters or inches!!! This was a test on the metric system, by the way!!!! We have spent 2 and a half weeks learning about the metric system and measuring in centimeters and millimeters and meters. NEVER once did we do anything in inches! Needless to say, today was a very stressfulk day filled with lots of problem solving.

Thursday- Today was my birthday. My students all knew it was my birthday so my first period class sang to me. It was so cute! Then at the end of the day, one of the other interns came over and brought me 80 birthday cards! I was so surprised that none of the students accidently told me the surprise. I do have to say that it was one of the best birthdays that I have had. Never have I received so many birthday cards with such meaningful messages. It really made me think that I am leaving an impression on these students and I am teaching them something. Many of them wrote about how they never used to like science until this year because I have made it so much fun by doing all of the hands-on activities. This makes me really happy because I am not really a science person either, but these past 8 weeks have really changed my mind about science. I have grown to love it!

Friday- Today was our second day of doing Tech Steps. So far it has been a disaster. The students just aren't getting it. We have broken it down into the littlest parts possible to help them. We are doing the one about investigating paper copters. So far all they have had to do was write a research question, a hypothesis, the variables, background information, and the materials. It has taken us two days to get this far. We should have had the experiment done by now and be ready to go into the computer lab. I don't know what the problem is. We have done every step with them, they just either aren't paying attention or really don't get it. This is all stuff that we have done before though so I am really confused. We spent weeks and weeks on all of these things. The students performed really well on their test. I am starting to think that maybe they haven't retained the information. I wonder what the problem could be?