Professional Development Learning

This past week I got the opportunity to participate in a professional development class. Our school participates is the sim development which consists of different parts, such as: comparison tables, unit organizers, course organizers, and frame. The topics we discuss were the unit organizer and the comparison table. The unit organizer was a very helpful guide for the students and I. This guide gives a schedule of what would be going on that day and the days to come, explanation to what will be learned from the unit, and how the lessons will be divided throughout the unit. The next topic we went over was the comparison table. This will be a great thing to use in the classroom to get the student more involved. The comparison table has 9 steps to which you follow. You start the table by coming up with two concepts, then step two is deciding an overall concept. Once the concepts and overall concept is decided you can now list some characteristics of each concept. Once the characteristics are listed, then place the like characteristics together and come up with like categories, then place the unlike characteristics together and come up with unlike categories. Once the categories have been made you now must make up a summary of the lesson and put and extension to the lesson. An example of the comparison table would be comparing alcohol and tobacco. Alcohol would be a concept, tobacco would be a concept, and maintaining a healthy lifestyle would be the overall concept. After a lesson this would be a great activity for the students to complete to show what they had learned from the lesson. In my opinion, by getting the students up and moving around will help get them more focused on what the lesson is about rather than making them sit there for the full ninety minutes.

I Never Knew Teaching Would Be So Hard!

At the beginning of college I knew that I wanted to be a coach/ teacher, but never knew how hard it would be after graduation. I never put that much thought into what teachers do until I became one and realized the stress and hard work that has to be done. It is not a simple job where you go to work and come home and relax, it is so much more. You have to know your content, organize your lessons, be prepared for anything that will come to you in the classroom, always be prepared in case you run out of time, and so much more. By no means is this a seven to three thirty job.

Parent Teacher Conference

Parent teacher conference is where my great success story took place and boosted my self esteem a little bit. We had parent teacher conference two nights in a row and it seem like the time went by so slow. I had around twenty five parents some see me asking about their children. As I was sitting there a sixth graders parent came up to me and began to ask questions about their child's class. As soon as the parent walked up and told me that she was a parent of a sixth grader I knew things were about to go down hill, but I was completely wrong. The parent began to explain that she had no idea what I had been saying or doing in the class, but it was working with her child. We had just finish the lesson on keeping healthy teeth and skin and she continued to explain how her child was brushing, flossing, and washing their face every night. After the parent told me this I do not think I quit smiling for about five minutes. The next parent came with their child which was in my accelerated reading homeroom. In this homeroom the students have to gain so many points by reading and taking tests on accelerated reading books. This particular child had not read a book or taken a test, so I was explaining to the parent why he had a zero percent in my class. As I kept talking I could just see more and more  anger in the parent's eyes. The parent sat there for a minuted then looked at her child and told him "he could forget the I phone for his birthday", then  looked at me and said  "he would be taking a test on Monday". I felt bad at first, but then my senses came and I realized all the child had to do was read a book.

Complete Confusion

As I posted earlier I had been having trouble with my sixth grade classes. The class had just finished a lesson on taking care of teeth and skin so I decided to give the class a test. My first sixth grade class went great, but my second sixth grade class was total confusion. I passes out the tests and everything was going so well, but I did what I thought I should do and everything went down hill. I have a non verbal child in the second sixth grade class that I have to do modifications for. Well I modified a test for the child and placed it on his desk and began to explain what to do. As I did this the child began to scream so loud the teacher next door came in and checked on me. When the child started screaming the whole class was distracted and got off task. I tried to get the class quiet to finish the test, but the child kept getting loud, distracting the class so the principal had to come down to my room to help make the child calm down. Although the end of the lesson test was total confusion  there was a great success story.

Help! any ideas??

Throughout this first nine weeks all my classes have been great except the sixth grade. I have sixth grade health at fourth block which is split into two forty five minute classes. By this time of the day the students are so excited, hard headed, just came from P.E.,  and  and ready to go home. It is so hard for me to grasp their attention for only a short period of time. I am  trying to include more activities in the class so they do not have to sit there the whole time, but it seems that the students do not get much out of the lesson when it is approached in activities. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.