Week Thirteen

This week was especially difficult because the students had Monday off and Friday was a half day. We were able to cover the first few parts of the Odyssey but they were easily distracted with visions of the break in their minds. They seemed to enjoy reading about Odysseus' adventures with Calypso and the Lotus Eaters. I am really glad that I have to study this story because I am starting to enjoy it more. Hopefully it will inspire the students as much as it is inspiring me. I am finding myself searching for more information about Greek mythology. The students have been asking questions and it is really nice to be able to look something up quickly in the classroom. I think that sometimes I take the technology we have for granted. It would have not been so easy to find information so quickly before the internet.

In the English 9 support class we worked on paraphrasing. I did not realize that it would be such a difficult skill for the students to master. I expected that several of them would already be able to paraphrase fairly well. It is hard sometimes as teachers to try and remember what it was like when we didn't know how to do something. I find that I have to really stop and think about how to help them understand concepts that I have already mastered. Paraphrasing is a very important skill for students to have. I will continue to figure out ways to teach it to students even if we don't have time to work on it more in this class. Hopefully there is some research out there that can explain some successful ways to help students understand how to paraphrase.

Week Twelve

We started reading The Odyssey this week. I was a little worried when I learned we were going to be reading it. I did not study it much in high school or college, and I am not very good with Greek mythology. Mrs. DeVault had them start out by watching a clip from Clash of the Titans, and it got them excited to watch Medusa get her head chopped off. I am more excited now to see how the unit goes because Mrs. DeVault seems to have a lot of knowledge and enthusiasm for the topic.

The week was a little disjointed because we had to administer the benchmarking test. The test was not as difficult as I expected. Some of the questions did not seem to pertain to the mapping that the county uses. It did not seem to be varied much besides asking reading comprehension questions. Some of the students were frustrated because they had to read long passages to answer one or two questions. I am not sure who makes the tests for our county, but it would be nice if teachers could give feedback about the tests. There was also a "thuse" on Friday for the football team, so the students were very excited about that and not very focused in class. We kept them on task as much as we could, and we were able to finish notes to prepare them to read the story.

Week Eleven

This week was a lot more fun than last week. We had school spirit activities, and the students dressed up each day. There was a thuse on Friday to get all the students excited about the East-West Fairmont football game. Mrs. DeVault thinks that we should have thuses for academic events. I think that it would be great if we could spend some time getting students ready to take the WestTest or benchmarking exams. I know that they may not exactly be excited to take them but having fun activities could help to keep their spirits high. I remember simply being excited about getting to have a snack with the test in elementary school. Hopefully someone will come up with some activity to prepare students for the exams in the school.

I was really impressed with how well the students did on their poetry projects. They turned them in on Friday and I graded them over the weekend. The students had to complete six different types of poems, and they had to draw a picture to accompany each. Many of the projects were excellent and I could see that the students had spent a long time working on them. There were a few students who did not turn in the project at all and that is going to hurt their grade. They always have the option to turn in assignments one day late for half credit but none of the students chose to do this. The poetry projects are going to be recorded in the next nine weeks. We completed many assignments last week so the students are starting out the new nine weeks with a lot of points. I am really happy with how the poetry unit went these past few weeks. I know that it was hard for the students to get into some of the poems but they seemed to enjoy it immensely at times. I can see that they learned something about the importance of poetry from their own poems. They included a lot of personal emotions and experiences that cannot be conveyed as well in prose. I am hopeful that some of the students will continue to read and write poetry to have a deeper understanding of themselves.

Week Ten

I think that I have been procrastinating writing about what happened last week because I don't want to think about how chaotic it was. I had planned a quiz and test for the students, they also had to recite a memorized poem, and their notebooks were due. It was already a packed week but some students in the school must not have realized my ultimate plan of fitting it all in so they decided to put a note in the bathroom with a bomb threat on it, Tuesday and Thursday. So we were off track in the afternoon classes for both days. All the students had to stand out in the rain on Tuesday and then in the freezing cold on Thursday. I felt bad that most of them had to have the quiz and test on the same day but I didn't have any time to postpone it. Somehow we got everything finished even with all the chaos. I was really surprised at how well the students did with their memorized poems on Friday. I was not expecting them to do very well because they have done horribly with homework before. I was wary of making them do this assignment but I am glad they succeeded because I can consider doing it in my future classroom.

So, the week was extremely busy but on top of that I have volunteered myself to help with the speech team. I participated in forensics and debate in high school so it is a lot of fun to help the students. However, I was recruited to judge the novice tournament this Saturday and I didn't find out I was needed until Thursday. :0 The tournament was really fun but we had to meet at the school at 6:30am and we didn't return until 11:00pm so it was a really long day. We took a really small team of 6 students and it was the first tournament for 4 of them. They had a lot of fun and learned what they need to improve for next time. I am excited to practice with them more; hopefully, someone can win a trophy next time. I didn't win much when I was in school but I remember the feeling of accomplishment that came with it. Speech teams are really great programs and I am sad that EFHS does not have a class devoted to it like some of the other schools. Forensics and debate really help students break out of their shells and become more comfortable in front of crowds. Maybe sometime in the future the students can push harder for a class. For now, you can find me in room 122 after school, on Tuesday and Friday, practicing for the next tournament.

Week Nine

This week was an exceptionally challenging week. The first two days should have been simple because we had library orientation, but Mrs. DeVault was out sick. Most of the students did a good job at staying behaved, but 7th period caused a lot of problems for the substitutes. This turned out to be a good thing because we suddenly had people volunteering to help out and come into 7th period to see how they were behaving. The principal has a list of all the students who cause problems consistently and he is going to keep an eye on them. On Friday the teacher in charge of detention stopped by and he sent the police officer down to sit with our class. They were better but all of the excitement also got some of them worked up. Hopefully next week they will behave so we don't have to hand out more detentions.

The students read and interpreted more poetry. They also got their poetry recitation assignment. Next Friday they have to recite a poem to the class. We will be practicing all week but it is still going to be a difficult assignment. Most students have anxiety about standing in front of their peers and this assignment also requires them to remember something. Hopefully it will go well because the students can use the extra points. The grading period is ending soon and some of the students are just now deciding to take class seriously. Maybe they will be able to do better during the second nine weeks so that they don't fail the semester. I don't want anyone to have to repeat a class but some of them do not put in any effort no matter how much we push them.

Week Eight

Week eight was a very busy week, to say the least. I took on teaching full time so I now have four regular English 9 classes and one English 9 support class. East Fairmont High School participates in curriculum mapping and this system sets up what will be taught each month. This month is poetry, punctuation and persuasive essays. This week we learned about poetry terms, haiku poetry and capitalization. The students did really well writing their own haiku poetry but most needed to have a lot of coaxing to get started. I am not sure why students have an aversion to poetry but I am going to try and get them to like it during the month. I hope, at the very least, that I will be able to turn them on to one poet they can relate to. We are going to cover many different types of poems during the month and the students will be able to write their own poems in response to some of the types of poetry we read. I am excited at how well they responded this week to the poems we covered and I hope that next week will be even better.

This week we also had parent teacher conferences. It was a really great experience to be able to sit in and even comment on some of the issues. The conferences lasted from 3-6 on Thursday and parents were coming through the door constantly. Mrs. DeVault would sit down with each parent or set of parents and talk about how their student was doing in class. Most parents had a pretty good idea because they can check their student's grades daily on Edline. Some parents had not checked the website and were very surprised to learn about the grades. I like the idea of having the grades be online but I am glad that Mrs. DeVault also has the students write their grades in their notebooks so that parents can see the grades without having to have access to a computer. The conferences went well and we are hopeful that some students who were not doing well will do better this week after we talked to their parents. Sadly, only one or two parents from 7th period came so we aren't sure what we are going to be able to do about their behavior. I did not have too much trouble with them this week considering how they can act but we don't get things done like we should because I constantly have to stop teaching to ask someone to be quiet or not to throw things, etc. We have called some parents, changed the seating arrangements and given detention but it only helps for a short amount of time. Hopefully we can figure out something this week that will help them calm down.

Week Seven

This week I was able to take on two classes full time to prepare for my full time teaching next week. It went really well. I taught fourth and fifth periods and they are probably my favorite in the day ( I know, no favorites, but I like the classes as a whole so that is ok, right? (= ) Fourth period is a really small class and they are really quiet. It can actually be disconcerting at first but they can be prompted to talk. It is strange that all the shy students were put in fourth and apparently all the not-shy ones are in seventh. Fifth period is a very spunky class and many students will answer questions. They are not perfect because they like to be chatty, but I like a good challenge.

I didn't do a lot of instruction because it was the last week for short stories and we also finished up parts of speech. So, I gave lots of tests (I think Mrs. DeVault wants me to be the bad guy or something, lol). They really didn't do well on most of the assignments this week and we reviewed a lot with them. We played a game on Thursday where we read questions from the actual test and many students still failed. It was pretty crazy to grade the tests and see that they missed things that we talked about so many times and we also gave them the exact answers for. Mrs. DeVault and I feel that the students need to work on their study skills. We are trying to come up with some ways that we can teach them in class. It is hard because we are already pressed for time to get in all the things we want to teach. Study skills should be something they have already learned by having tests and assignments prior to high school. We will come up with something though, I am sure.