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.

Week Six

In honor of midterms I thought it would be a good idea to answer this blog prompt: Review your activities for the week and then select and describe three that are good illustrations of elements included on the Intern Rubric. Instead of giving three examples I am going to give 6 examples.

This week and in the past few weeks some notable activities that I have participated in have been:

1. Observing teachers with specific expertise. I was able to observe in a Spanish classroom with a very vibrant classroom and teacher. I observed a teacher in AP History and actually enjoyed history for the first time in a classroom. I observed an autism classroom with only 4 students but they had a lot of spunk. Lastly, I observed an AP Language class where I learned about the Canterbury Tales and remember what we talked about because of the conversational style the teacher used (I know I am going to be an English teacher but I had always hoped to not have to teach the Canterbury Tales). It was a lot of fun to experience all the different teaching styles and subjects.
2. Brainstorming methods of communicating with parents. We have talked about this for the past few weeks and I made a class webpage. Last week we talked about sending home Scholastic book orders with a letter to the parents about the S.S.R. program. Sometimes teachers forget that Scholastic books are available to older students. We are very excited to get the book order in the mail so that we can send it home with the students.
3. Volunteering myself for a field trip. In November, right after Thanksgiving break, we will be attending a performance of some of the short stories we have been reading. The students will get out of school for the day to go to Charleston and watch a play company perform portions of short stories. I will be riding the bus and keeping them in line. (=
4. Recording grades. I have been grading papers in the past weeks and I also learned how to use GradeQuick. I enter the students' grades and post them to the server so they can view them at home. I like this way of keeping grades but it is a difficult program to work with at times and I am concerned about some teachers who are not technically savvy.
5. Reading professional literature. I have been reading more studies on S.S.R. programs to see how other educators have set their programs up. I have learned a lot about what I can improve in our program and things that I can improve for future programs. I have also started reading literature about how to teach poetry because that is the unit I am teaching starting next week. There are a lot of great ideas for how to best get students interested in poetry.
6. Collecting action research data. I collect data for the action research program almost daily because students fill out an engagement survey each time that they finish a book. We have also been keeping data from comprehension tests that students take in class. The week before last we gave them a practice test sent by the WV testing board that will help us analyze their reading comprehension and also help the students practice for the WestTest.

Whew, that is a lot of work. I still have a lot of things to do in order to meet all the characteristics of a novice teacher but everything seems to be moving along smoothly.

Week Five

This week went by really fast. I worked on a lot of lesson planning for my poetry unit that I will be starting in two weeks. I have been struggling with how to structure the lessons. On one hand I want to keep some consistency with what Mrs. DeVault has been doing with the short stories and on the other hand I want to be able to create new things. I am trying to keep a balance between both things. She has a lot of good resources already made for some of the poems we will be studying. I plan on using some of the handouts she has created but altering some others to meet the goals I want to achieve. I have chosen most of the same poems that she taught last year because they are important "classics" I think the students would benefit from studying. I have added some that she did not do because I liked a particular author (ex: Pablo Neruda) or have more knowledge of a poem. I am really excited to start the unit because I think that the students will have fun reading the short poems and brainstorming poems they want to write. They will be required to compose a "book" of their own poetry at the end of the unit and we will be working on pieces to include throughout the lessons.

I am concerned about teaching full-time because one of our classes is particularly difficult. Most of the students in the class are upperclassmen that have to retake 9th grade English. Some of them are even taking another English class at the same time. I can understand why they might be frustrated but their behavior is appalling at times. The class is quite large as well so that does not help the behavior problems. They seem to give Mrs. DeVault some respect because they get worse when she leaves the room but they are still very rude to her. She is a fairly quiet and very respectful teacher, something I am not really used to because I have worked with more outspoken teachers in the past. I feel bad for the way that they take advantage of her because she cares about them. She has been putting her foot down lately and giving out detentions. It is helping some. Yesterday they were talking a lot during the SSR time and so I told them that we did not have to read every day if they did not want to. At first they were acting excited about not reading but then they realized they would have to start doing class work earlier and they decided they would rather be quiet. It worked well so I hope that might motivate them to behave some. I think that when I am given my "teacher status" (in their eyes) by teaching full time they will respect me more. I am also not going to be quite as quiet if they are not respectful. I will be respectful to them but I will keep order so that they might actually learn something.

Week Four

Wow. Time is passing very quickly. This week we worked a lot with the constitution. Mrs. DeVault and I collaborated to come up with a project to get the students motivated to learn about the amendments. In years past she has normally required a paragraph or essay but the students are growing tired of doing the same thing year after year. We decided to gear their projects towards using multi-genres. The students were able to work in pairs and choose one amendment to work on. They were required to make a billboard, interview or comic strip.

The students were able to work on their projects in class for two days and take them home if they needed to do additional work. They came up with some really great ideas. Most of the students chose to do the billboard. All of the students had to present their projects in front of the class today. They did a great job. Mrs. DeVault and I also assumed that by having them in pairs they would be less reluctant to present in front of their peers. We are trying to gradually introduce them to the idea of presenting in front of the class. Eventually they will be reciting a memorized poem later in the semester. I was really glad that we decided to alter the project this week because the students seemed to have fun being creative and it helped them to remember what the amendments mean to them.

Week Three

The reading program is going well. They complained a little at first but once they are now getting into their books a little they are doing better. I am really glad that we were able to get everything started without much trouble. I was really surprised by the way that they chose their books though. They made a big deal about what the book covers looked like. Sometimes they would pick out a book based only on that. I don't know why I didn't realize that it would be something so important to them because high schoolers, 9th graders in particular, are very wary of the appearance of themselves and things surrounding their lives as well. Also, cover art is usually meant to catch people and make them want to read books. I am a visual person to an extent but the words that describe the book on the back are much more important to me. I might have felt a little awkward in high school when I carried around a book with weird art but I still read it because of the words and not the cover. I must admit, though, that I am into reading vampire fiction of all types (I even took a class at WVU on the subject, yes, there is such a class) and sometimes I am reluctant to carry those books around because the covers are explicitly sexual or violent looking. It is strange to me how much a picture means to a work of literature.

I am glad that on my initial survey of the students I included a section for them to show what made them interested in reading certain books. It was informative to see that lots of students choose books based on movies they have seen or ones that their parents recommend. Mrs. DeVault and I took the survey as well and she says that she looks for books that have received awards. I noticed that she recently chose to read a book based on the awards it showed on the front. I have always skimmed over the awards on books so it was neat to find out that people use those to choose books. All of the information I have gathered from the survey and from observation in the classroom about how students decide what to read is helping me to decide what books to choose for the classroom. In the future I want to be sure to choose a variety of books not only based on their subjects but also on their appearance.

Week Two

This week was a really tiring week. The scheduling was completely off almost every day and we had two fire drills. I can remember being a student and being really happy when an interruption occurred but I can really see how it can mess up a lesson plan. I had some similar situations last semester when I was trying to teach a lesson but this week really showed me how frustrating it can be to try to plan something and constantly have to change it.

Mrs. DeVault was pretty impressive with getting everything (I think) done that she wanted in such a short period of time. I am sure that the first week was even more taxing on her because she likes to have everything planned to a "T" and it is near impossible the first week. She worked hard to get the students through an entire short story including vocabulary and lots of grammar review. I looked at her lesson plans last week and thought that it was doable but once this week hit I really have no idea how she kept it together. I even had time to introduce my SSR program with a mini-lesson.

I had the students fill out the introductory survey to the program. One assesses their reading interest and the other asks more specific questions about what they have read or enjoy reading. I was pretty impressed with their answers because I was expecting a lot more negative than I received. It was less than half that enjoyed reading on some level but being angsty 9th graders Mrs. DeVault and I had expected a lot of opposition. I am really glad that I kept the parts about their TV and extra-curricular activities on the survey because it helped me to introduce the program with some of the books I thought they would be interested in.

I introduced the program on a different day and had the students make bookmarks where they had to tell the class something that they liked to do. They also had to list two books that they were interested in reading on the back of the bookmark. I made sure to bring out a lot of books from the classroom library that I thought would grab their attention. Almost every student had the required two books written on the back of their bookmark so I am anxious to see what they choose to read on Tuesday. We will start reading for 10 minutes at the beginning of class each day next week. I am excited because it looks like it is going to go well and most of the students seem interested in giving it their best shot. (=

Week One

I posted my introductory post after my first day at EFHS but I wanted to follow it up with some more information about what happened. It was strange to be there before all the students arrived. For the first time I was on the teacher side more than the student side and I got to see all the drama that takes place behind the scenes. My mother is a teacher and I have gone with her to school to prepare before but she always let me stay in her classroom while all the meetings were going on. It was a good experience to see how much the teachers have to prepare for the students.

One day we went over WestTest scores so we could see how the students improved and what we needed to work on the most this year. It was good to actually have that hands-on experience with the scores. The teachers still have frustrations with the test and the way No Child Left Behind affects teaching. I do think that there are some good things that it has influenced though and once you get down to the scores you can see how the state and national standards are being stressed. sometimes it seemed like an arbitrary test to me so it was good to see where all the questions come from. I was disappointed to see how much weight was placed on one question though. It meant that some standards had only one question judging whether or not a student had mastered that skill and that does not seem right. Overall it was a good experience to see how the test works from a teaching standpoint and I am glad to get the figures on what students really struggle with.

Hello!

Hi everyone. Just as an FYI: this blog was created so that I can reflect each week on my intern student teaching experience. I will be doing my teaching at East Fairmont High School in Mrs. DeVault's 9th grade classrooms. I am really excited to get started this semester. My Action Research project is going to be a Sustained Silent Reading program (Bee Reading!) and the students will be required to read for ten minutes at the beginning of each period. Mrs. DeVault and I are still trying to figure out how everything will work out with each classroom.

I am glad to be working with her because she is a very organized person and she has most of the semester already drafted out. She will start out with a unit on short stories and I will help where I can. Then, we will move into a unit on poetry where I will be doing most of the teaching. Finally, we will do work on the Odyssey and hopefully finish up before Christmas break. It looks like it is going to be a good semester and I like that we are laying a lot of things out ahead of time. I am sure that it will be stressful at times but we will be ready to overcome those challenges when we get there. Stay tuned!