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.