Shh! Respect!!!

Today I taught my very own lesson plan for the very first time in my very own (well, sort of) official classroom.  If I were to summarize my experience in four words it would be:  I have a migraine.

Yea, that bad.  But it's not like I expected anything to run smoothly the first time around.  The kids seemed pretty excited and I could literally see them sitting up a little straighter in anticipation for something spectacular....and then....somehow....I lost the magic!

I started off my language and math lessons reviewing the rules I planned on using during my teaching schedule:
1) Respect: for your peers and your teacher, to raise your hand, take turns, and listen to one another
2) Three strikes: I had (but I need to change this for the better) a system where the class was against me...if they misbehave I get a point and when they were doing what they were supposed to, then they scored a point.  First one to three can claim their prize.  So a teacher prize would be some sort of agreement the class made, e.g. detention or an apology letter, etc.  And if my kids managed to win 3 points everyday, then Friday we could do something fun.
3) Thumbs up if you understand, thumbs down if you don't.  So I avoid the, "I don't get it" whine.

I think they were a little mystified at my system but eventually they got the hang of it (as in the moment I got a point when they were being too loud).  But after awhile they forgot all about rules and respect....and I found myself fighting to be heard against chatty grade five kids.  Ironically the chatty ones were the ones whispering to their neighbours in earnest, "Shh! Remember respect! Don't make us lose a point!".  Umm YOU'RE THE ONES MAKING THE RACKET!  Lovely.  I even had one sass back at me when I caught them talking out loud during my lesson.  Adorable.

If I were a teen celebrity I'd probably describe my math lesson as one hot mess.  Even with my associate teacher standing in the back and stepping close to the loud ones and me warning them that I had only one more point to win, it made not one difference.  The grade fives officially took over my lesson.

The other issue is that my class is loud in general, and the whole school knows it.  It's just a different teaching environment provided by my particular teacher and so I have to fight against the grain to get the type of classroom environment I want for my portion of the lesson.  So both of our methods failed to calm the crowd and eventually I just had to trek through it to finish what I needed to finish.  (Why does that sound so familiar? *foot in my mouth*)

One sweet girl actually said that this was the best math lesson she ever had.  Aw that's nice, but inside I knew that it was a terrible lesson (or at least a poorly executed one), and I knew that my associate knew .  So tonight I get to evaluate and reflect on said hot mess and come prepared tomorrow to teach an entire reading section and another round at math.  My boxing gloves are up! 

Watch out grade fives!  Miss V's got her game face on :)  

PS.  Anyone out there with class management tips are MORE than welcome to comment!

Ah! Lesson Planning!

So I've officially been given the green light to begin lesson planning for math.  But not just one or two lessons....the entire math unit for the rest of the month!  I was really excited that I could get such a big chunk of teaching for my first practicum but now I'm sitting with the textbook and the curriculum expectations and wondering how I'm going to make this actually interesting and informative.  My associate teacher seems to like the philosophy "if it ain't broke don't fix it" But the lesson plans offered with the textbook seem sOOO boring.  On top of that I'll be doing a few social studies, language arts and even music lessons sprinkled across the week.  I'm very exicted but the task seems slightly daunting.  Funny how easy lesson planning seemed to be when it was just for an assignment...now that there are real kids involved I'm getting awfully nervous.  Wish me luck!

The marking conundrum

So it turns out that some people didn't even try to bring any objects in or even write a lesson plan!  One of my friends in the program actually heard someone say, "They'll pass me anyway so I don't see why I need to stress about this kinda stuff."  Wow.

In any case what other people are or aren't doing doesn't really effect me until group work comes along.  In the meantime I think my lesson plan went pretty well! In our small group I had examples of paper planes that mimicked hang gliders and others that looked more like jets.  I threw them around the class and encourage the audience to brainstorm ideas about air and what traits made a good or bad flyer.  The assignment focused on the beginning of the lesson and how we'd follow that with a hands on activity, etc and I think I achieved that.  Overall I was happy :)

Shortly after science we headed to our next lecture where they brought up an important issue in teaching...subjectivity.  Everyone in the lecture hall was given a grade 8 student's work sheet with answers from a spelling test.  We were not given the answer key and asked to mark it out of 25.  The cursive was really a mess and everyone was having a hard time going through it.  Afterward a mini poll was conducted and on average the mark the student got varied from "unknown" right to 21/ 25.  The point was clear: we all have our reasons for marking the way we do but in the end the student is the recipient of these variations even in a population with similar academic goals.

Afterward we were given the answer key.  After re-marking, the range narrowed but only from 12 to 23/25.  Other things we realized after we had finished marking: the answer key itself had errors, there were actually only 24 words not 25, even with the answer key some letters were hard to discern, and this theoretically was only one test out of 30 students in the class.

So many issues on how our personal teaching philosophies, styles and choices on things like spelling, full marks, partial marks, penmanship had HUGE ramifications on the success, confidence and grades of the student.  Everyone had their own valid but personal reasons for marking the way they did, and yet depending on which teacher this kid had on any given day...he could have been given anything between a fail to an A.

The layers just keep coming and I'm realizing that the responsibility is so much greater than I could have ever expected :S  Just a little scary... Oh and I almost forgot to mention: the individual that was writing as the grade eight student was one of the professors... and even though he had chicken scratch writing, all of the words were spelled correctly.

Already in need of a laugh.

It seems I've found myself doing an all-nighter..and it's way too early in the game!  For science class we had to pick an object and demonstrate it to the class and explain a) what grade b) what unit and c) how to incorporate the object into the lesson to capture student's attention.  Since I have very few items at home that allow me to do some fun experiments/demonstrations I decided to visit the education library for some tools to borrow.  I ended up grabbing a convex/concave lenses kit with mirrors and all..... I was working on the demo today when I realized that the darn thing wasn't working!  I made sure to seal off my flashlight and make sure that a single line of light source was going into the lenses and it wasn't doing anything... at all.  No refraction, no bending light ...and this is due tomorrow.

After some youtubing and googling I was desperate ...I then decided to give up and do a refraction lesson with a pencil and a glass of water.  But I couldn't bring myself to write up such a boring explanation!

So, finally, I decided to do a flight unit instead for Grade 6 level...which means I'll be doing a paper air plane demo.  I don't know how obvious or boring this is compared to pencil in water....but I managed to find some cool youtube demos of differently shaped planes that give different flight variances.  I'm hoping this will be a good starting point for kids to wonder about the differences in shapes and its effects on aerodynamics.  Hopefully I could maybe take it one step further with real life examples where size, material, angles etc are important to our flight safety on air planes.

I don't know if this is lame or a cop out.... but it's 1:30am and this is due tomorrow and at this point that's the best I can do.  Sucks that this will be the way I produce my very first legitimately marked lesson plan.... but it is what it is.

On a complete random note the following video is purely for your amusement.  I've been giggling quietly in my room watching this because I needed some cheering up... I want what this kid is on!! Enjoy.