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.