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.