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.