Yeah We Made It!

Hopefully everyone that was part of our blog was granted tenure! How exciting that we made it, we should celebrate and maybe even continue to share cool stuff we are trying in our classrooms. I hope that everyone is having a great start to the new school year. I look forward to hearing about the great new stuff you are trying!

End of year anxiety

This year I have 7 seniors on my case load, and 6 of the 7 have already been accepted to post-secondary programs or enlisted in the military. I think they are all starting to feel some anxiety though about leaving high school and moving on to the unknown. When they walked in the doors on the 1st day of their 10th grade year, many of them probably weren't thinking about what they really needed to do to walk out of here with as much as they possibly could on that last day of their senior year. We really do have so much to offer them, but for some of them they realize it too late. This is a really good group of kids, sure they had many struggles, but I still don't think they took much time to look at "the big picture" as they went through high school. Did we, when we were their age? I often think about what the kids were like in my high school and what was I like at their age. What was different for me and how can I help these kids reach their full potential and push them to do their best? I am feeling some anxiety for these kids as well. Did I help them build enough of the skills they are going to need to be successful adults in school and in life? I know that the responsibility did not lie solely on me, but I've worked very closely with them for 3 years. Although I am excited for them to move on, I am definitely sad to see them go.

So we have less than 2 weeks of class left and, despite doing weekly grade checks, with all of my students, some of them still seem shocked that they are not passing certain classes. When we do grade checks we talk about the missing assignments and if they have them (for some reason some of my students have this problem where they do their homework but don't turn it in), if they started them, if they need to talk to their teachers about them, and what they need to do to turn future assignments in on time. Missing homework is not the only reason they are failing, though. Some students actually complete their homework, but they do not perform well on tests. We talk about study strategies all year, and despite the fact that their study strategies haven't worked they still refuse to try new suggestions. Or if they did try something that was suggested once and they didn't see dramatic results they aren't willing to try it again. How can I change their thinking? We go over homework, study and test taking strategies every year (several times a year). They reflect on what they did or do not do well and how to change the things they did not do well every semester. However, even though doing my homework and studying for tests is something they always say they are going to improve, most of them still end up with the same results. We've talked about SMART goals, but it's just frustrating when they don't understand when they didn't change anything but expected a different result.

Offering Student Choice

I collaborated with CarolAnn last year in planning some English 10 assignments and learned a lot from CarolAnn. I also now have a few projects for English 10 that I love assigning and students love working on. One of the projects that I enjoy is a differentiated poetry assignment titled “Your Turn!”

During the spring semester of English 10 we have a unit where we read short stories and poems and study poetry devices/figurative language. Students study figurative language terms and practice identifying the terms in poetry. Students then need to analyze the function of figurative language in poetry. For example, a student may identify a simile in a poem, but then he/she needs to analyze the simile’s influence in the poem.

After reading poems by Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Carl Sandburg in class students choose from a list of poems a poem that they would like to do the poetry project for. The Your Turn assignment calls for students to complete a number of activities for the poem that they have selected. All students must analyze the theme and the figurative language used in the poem. After those two required assignments, students choose from a list of other activities. Students may write a poem in response to their chosen poem, they may create an artistic representation of their poem, they may recite their poem, and they may also choose an activity of their own to react to the poem. Students do an awesome job with this assignment and I am always impressed with what they come up with. One of my favorite artwork creations was done for the poem “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar. The poem is all about the masks that people wear to hide how they are truly feeling. A student chose this poem and used clay to create four different colored masks.

I like offering students choices with assignments and I have definitely found that students like being able to share what they have learned in their own way.

Procrastination

Last Tuesday my fourth hour was able to go listen to a motivational speaker named Jermaine Davis. Jermaine talked about how procrastination gets in the way of you achieving your goals and dreams. He also talked a lot about how important it is to surround yourself with people who only push you forward and lift you up, and not people who get in the way of your dreams and goals.

I was interested to hear what my class would have to say about the message. They were actually pretty impressed with the speaker. One girl mentioned that it was a good reminder to her to only surround herself with people who are a good influence on her.
I know that high schoolers are learning how to not procrastinate and that this is something that is a real struggle for many of them. For the research paper in English 10, the teachers really try to break up the paper into smaller parts so that the students are able to be successful with the assignment. I assign due dates for the smaller sections of the research paper. I am able to give feedback on the smaller sections of the paper this way. Another goal with these due dates is to encourage students not to procrastinate. Some students, however, still procrastinate and do not turn in anything on the due dates. Sometimes these same students turn something in as a final draft, but they don’t usually get a good grade. It is frustrating that even with our assistance with breaking things down, creating due dates, and providing work time in class, that some students still procrastinate.

Has anyone had success with getting students to not procrastinate with big papers/projects? I will continue to encourage students to break big assignments up into smaller, more manageable chunks, but sometimes I feel like this is one of the most difficult life skills to teach. Any suggestions?

Retain 10% of knowledge

I just read an article for my Grad school class regarding how much students actually retain in a class period. Remarkably it is only 10%. I find this kind of shocking. But I do kind of see it as well. Students these days have roughly 7 classes, work, sports, and of course TV and cell phones. Some are just not that interested in school. And especially with only 3 weeks left, it is getting hard to motivate them.

I have been trying to do more Inquiry learning in the classroom. This is a tool that will hopefully help students remember more than just 10% of what went on in class. Getting students to generalize a problem, figure out a solution and analyze the data at hand will hopefully get them to remember what occurred in class. Students get sick of taking notes and looking at power points all day. If they are out of their seats and moving around the room trying to figure out a solution to a question that they have to discover is a wonderful solution to a typical class period.

During these last couple of weeks we really need to motivate students to want to come to class, get ready for finals, and pay attention during the school day. I have multiple labs left to cover during my final unit of Chemistry class. Which gets them out of their seats, and gets them using lab materials and testing on lab equipment. How are other classes keeping students motivated these last couple of weeks of the school year?

I found this website with some helpful hints. It is nice that as a school we are doing most of them. Or at least in my department we are.
1. Start Class with a Mind Warm-Up
2. Use Movement to Get Kids Focused
3. Teach Students How to Collaborate Before Expecting Success
4. Use Quickwrites When You Want Quiet Time and Student Reflection
5. Run a Tight Ship When Giving Instructions
6. Use a Fairness Cup to Keep Students Thinking
7. Use Signaling to Allow Everyone to Answer Your Question
8. Use Minimal-Supervision Tasks to Squeeze Dead Time out of Regular Routines
9. Mix up Your Teaching Styles
10. Create Teamwork Tactics That Emphasize Accountability

http://www.edutopia.org/classroom-student-participation-tips

KEEP YOUR STUDENTS MOTIVATED :-)

Bullying

In the January/February issue of Nea Today, there was an article on bullying. As a parent and a special education teacher, this is a very important issue for me. My son, who will be 8 on Wednesday, is sweet, smart and sensitive. He has many friends and a great sense of humor, but he has already been bullied. Last year a student repeatedly told him, "I'm going to kill you if you don't give me your toe tokens" (little plastic feet that he earned for running laps around the track at school). I can't remember how I found out about this, but when I talked to him and told him we needed to tell his YMCA teacher, he did not want us to. We had previously talked to him about bullying-why it's not nice to bully others, how it makes people feel, and what to do if you are being bullied, but he didn't want us to intervene and didn't really want to share it with us in the first place. We of course met with his teacher and she made him feel good about sharing the situation with her and she explained why it was important for him to tell an adult. There had been other instances of this student bullying other kids and this started in Kindergarten-YIKES. the Nea article stated that bullying usually starts just as kids are learning about and trying to form relationships so that's when we need to start the dialogue with students-in preschool. It makes sense to me, and I think students definitely need to be educated about bullying during school. I'm not sure all parents would feel comfortable explaining all the different aspects of bullying and how to prevent it or what to do if you are bullied. Parents definitely have an important role, but we need to get a consistent message out to kids at an early age and work toward a bully-free culture. It's not just a part of growing up, and it won't make you stronger. Bullying can have lasting affects on its victims and because of today's technology it's much easier for people to gang up on the bullied. It's very sad that so many young people are commiting suicide because of the torment they've gone through. I hope I can keep communication open between my children and my students about bullying, how to stand up for people who are being bullied, and what to do if you are being bullied. I also hope that as teachers we will not look the other way when we see bullying or pass it off as "normal".