November 15-19, 2010

This week was my first week full time teaching. I had a lot of issues with the students respecting me. We had several talks over the course of the week about respect and disrespect. I am not sure what the issue is, but I could not get them to stop talking. On Friday, I just about had enough and they could tell how upset I really was. This is when I asked the students to put themselves in my shoes. I asked students to tell me how they would feel if they were trying to teach and I wouldn't stop talking...many of the students admitted that they would not be very happy and would be upset. This is when I asked: why do it to me then? They were dumbfounded. I think that this conversation had an impact on them. Today (Monday the 22nd), my teacher came in with a list of strategies that she has used in the past to keep students under control. I wrote the word "Walking" on the board today to indicate a reward of 15 or so minutes outside walking. I told students if I had to erase a letter, we would subtract 2 minutes. I also told them that they could earn a letter back. At one point, I had to erase the W and A, but students did eventually earn it back. This was the quietest I have ever seen them! After lunch, it started to go back downhill. I am not sure what the reason for that is, but it is really frustrating. I am hoping that I can utilize some of these strategies and that they are effective!


Action Research Week 5/6
This unit is a lot harder than Unit 3. No matter if I use a book or not, students are not performing well on the exit slips. Students are learning about measurement. This is a hard concept for students to grasp. Also, I think students are becoming sick of the exit slips because students seem to be flying through them just to get them done. I hope that I am able to get decent results from this research. I am still unsure about how to go about writing this whole thing up because I really don't think that my results can answer my question.