Sneak peak into my TI

I don't want to ruin the TI I'm going to present on Tuesday by going into great detail , but I thought I would blog a just little bit about what's going on in my American lit class. My first day teaching, I had the students complete a writing sample so I could assess their individual abilities. As I started reading them, I knew right away that I was working with a very diverse group of students: some of them couldn't write in complete sentences and used no punctuation, and others were obviously really comfortable with writing and ready to take it to the next step. Without thinking, I pulled out a post-it note and grouped the students together according to writing ability. Because grammar is such an important part of our classroom, it didn't seem fair to make the high-level students sit through grammar lessons each day because their writing samples reflected their understanding of the concepts. On the other hand, some students really needed help with simple sentence structure, so it is important (according to L-S) to teach these students the basics of simple grammar by drilling them every day. I knew right away that differentiation would without a doubt be vital to my success in this classroom.

Before the second week ended, I already had confrontations with students from the high-end and the low-end of the academic spectrum. The gifted girl went home and complained to her parents that we weren't moving through the material fast enough for her; she was bored and didn't feel challenged in our classroom. I met with her parents yesterday (more about this on Tuesday). The same day, a struggling student grumbled under his breath, "I hate this class!" When I pulled him aside and asked him about it, he said we needed to move slower. He felt completely lost and hopeless in our classroom. Each day, he completely shuts down; he puts his head down on his desk and usually refuses to participate. His body language suggests that he is unengaged, and maybe has had a bad experience with school for a long time.

The pressure is on for us to come up with something that works for all of our students. The social structure of this classroom is really dynamic, even complicated. There are students that openly proclaim they hate each other, so we have to be really careful about creating groups. I will share more with you on Tuesday when I discuss my TI. I have been trying different strategies, and I look forward to hearing your suggestions!

Continuing the conversation

I got a great suggestion from a teacher on the English Companion Ning. I asked about something better than reading guides because that is just about all my co-op and I did for "To Kill a Mockingbird." One of the teachers on the Ning recommended using dialogues to promote understanding. The example she used was "after reading the chapters with Mayella's and Tom's testimony, give the kids this:

Albert: "Mayella Ewell is lyin' trash!"

Hilda: "Actually, I feel sorry for her."

The students then continue this conversation, making Albert and Hilda explain their viewpoints with evidence from the text. Share these the next day at the beginning of class."

I never thought of anything like that! Sure it isn't fool-proof, but it's certainly better than questions on a reading guide. I know that reading guides serve a purpose and it is a great way for information to be in the same place, but doesn't it get old after a while? It does for me, that's for sure.

Relevancy during Shadowing

I shadowed my student last Friday and it was really great. We'll call him Robert. He is a student whom my co-op and I kind of have mixed feelings about. I like the kid and, despite him being a pain most of the time, don't mind having him in my class. My co-op doesn't really like him, though. She doesn't think he has a chance to redeem himself. I don't know if it's because I'm more willing to work with him, but he seems to respond better to me than my co-op. The co-teacher also brought up the point that he is of Mexican background and culturally he might appreciate males more than females (my co-op and the co-teacher are both female). Anyone have any thoughts on this? I would have never thought about that until they mentioned it. Anyone else experience this?

I asked Robert at some point throughout the semester if he liked to write. I saw that he was always drawing and I thought I would occasionally see a hint of writing mixed in with his stuff. To this he told me that he likes writing poetry and sometimes short stories. Bam. There it is. There is my connection to this student. Well, after weeks of asking him every time I saw him if he could bring in some writing for me to check out, still nothing. But during my shadowing I was able to bring up some relevancy during his computer class. He was writing a blog post that had some pretty bad grammar and sentence errors which made it slightly difficult to read. After helping him with some of them I brought up the point of needing to write well to be a successful writer. This seemed to make sense to him.

I'm really glad that I could shadow this specific student and get to know more about why he does what he does. I wish we could shadow all of our students and learn this much about them!

Teaching Vocab

As all of you can understand, I became really bored with teaching vocabulary (after the third week). Even from the beginning, I wasn't sold on the idea of teaching it. Every Monday I had to introduce 10-12 new words to students and then quiz them on the words that Friday. And the quizzes were no joke. The students were asked to spell each word as I read it aloud, match the word to its definition, come up with some original sentences using the words correctly, fill in the blank with the appropriate vocabulary word, and even work with affixes as they were asked to learn prefixes and their meaning; a new word using a prefix from the unit would appear on the quiz and the students were asked to make an educated guess about the definition of the new word. And I have to admit, I ran into some words that I had to previously encountered; I found myself googling words the night before a vocab lesson to determine the appropriate pronunciation.

I had the freedom to experiment with the teaching of vocabulary in a variety of ways. I had the students do a lot of group work, create art work and other visuals about the words, act out the words, etc. etc. We pretty much tried something new each week. But I am still confused about the whole idea of teaching vocabulary and I don't know where I stand on the issue. In the world of English teachers, it is a controversial issue. Some don't believe in teaching it-- they think vocabulary is learned through reading and communication. Others believe that teaching students new words is increasing their lexicons; therefor, it is an asset to the teaching of the language. I guess I just don't buy into students being asked to memorize words that are not even in the dictionary, like "pseudo-Aesculapian". It is really important that high school students learn the definitions of words that I had never even heard of?

My cooperating teacher strongly believes in the teaching of vocabulary, and I am not sure if I agree or disagree with her. She knows the statistics and the cites the studies-- once a word is heard however many times, and it used however many times it becomes a part of the lexicon. If this is the case, and students are genuinely increasing their vocabulary-- it's a good thing-- right? During my weeks teaching vocab, I introduced the students to about 100 words. If they are retaining this information, and using the learned words in their college essays-- which they say they did-- it's not a bad thing, is it? I kind of have a feeling that the majority of the words are memorized for the quiz and immediately forgotten, and it makes me sad to think about the wasted class time.

What do you guys think about teaching vocab? Is it a waste or is it useful?

On the Socratic Seminar

My cooperating teacher recently went to Rome for some teacher training, and she returned with some really amazing ideas for our classroom-- one being the use of the socratic seminar. She was excited to try it, and we immediately brainstormed ideas so that we could experiment with it right away. Our eleventh grade Brit lit students had been working on "sonnet packets" where they were required to identify the rhyme schemes and meter of the poems. We started to come up with ways to utilize the already existing sonnet packets for a socratic seminar later that day. Suddenly, in the middle of our brainstorming, she received a phone call that her son needed to be picked up from school immediately. She gave me the green light to experiment with the socratic seminar during the last period of the day. I thought about it over lunch and decided to go for it. I am so glad I did. It was by far the best and most rewarding experience I've had so far in my teaching experience.

I moved four desks to the front of the room forming a pod. I asked the students to free write for five minutes about the first sonnet in the packet which was Spenser's sonnet 75. The students were somewhat familiar with it, so I didn't feel bad asking them to analyze its meaning and themes. I explained that I needed four volunteers to discuss the sonnet in front of the class. Without hesitation, four students walked to the front of the room and began a discussion. I kept quiet for awhile as they spoke about the ideas of true love, monogamy, death, and legacy. I actually got tears in my eyes a few times during this activity. I knew my students were intelligent and articulate, but it was one of those moments that I was truly and profoundly proud of them. I could see that they were genuinely understanding and grasping the timeless themes in a classic piece of literature. And I just sat there and listened, and asked appropriate questions when necessary. At one point, I moved the conversation to the modern day by asking them to name songs that discuss similar themes or ideas. The majority of the class ended up participating in the socratic seminar that day, and I can say with honestly that this was a definite turning point for me as a student teacher. If you ever have the chance to experiment with the socratic seminar-- just do it! You will not be disappointed.

Trouble with Budgets

So, as I'm sure you are all aware, budget cuts are looming on the horizon for a lot of schools if they haven't already begun chopping away. Almost everyday that I am at the school I am exposed to conversations about budget cuts, union issues, and school board decisions. It can be somewhat disheartening at times when you are a young student-teacher ready to finally run full-throttle in a classroom. However, it can also be somewhat rewarding to not be completely idealized about the future of education. I'm trying to be aware of the reality of public education while still staying excited about teaching, after all, it is about what is best for the students. Has anyone else been dealing with these type of issues? I was talking to my co-op today about teacher unions and trying to gain a better understanding of how it all works. I can definitely see how it could be easy to get wrapped up in the politics of education but it is sooooo important that we keep the students at the forefront of these conversations.

A little taste of real teaching

So today we had prep first period so my co-op used the time to deal with a bullying issue that has been going on for a couple days now. What we didn't know getting into it was that it was going to escalate to the point where my co-op spent the majority of the first 3 periods out of the room, making phone calls, and in the guidance office as everything unfolded.

So naturally this left me unattended and unsupervised in the front of the classroom for 2nd and 3rd period. Fortunately I had planned the CA lesson for the day so I had been planning to run the class from the beginning anyway. I jumped in and began and actually looking back didn't even really notice my co-op running in and out of the room. The lesson went smoothly. I was happy with it, and was also able to make some changes for the next class 2 periods later.

Because the bullying thing took much longer than anticipated and I did not know what the plan was for social studies, I just continued my lesson into the next period. (Fortunately I tend to underestimate how long activities will actually take so therefore I over plan without trying).

So, four good things came out of today for me:
1. I got a taste of  what student teaching will be like by going from one class to the next without a break.
2. I got a taste of what being an actual classroom teacher feels like by not having my co-op in the room to back me up and support my decisions and management of behavior.
3. I was able to reflect on my lesson (almost automatically) in such a way that I could modify it for the next class.
4. I realized that I am able to plan and teach for a block period (I was worried) if ever I would actually have to. What I thought was maybe a 50 minute lesson turned into a 90 minute lesson. (Which I know is both good and bad, but today it was a good thing. I was trying to find positives in the day).

Just wanted to share a little victory in this stressful time. =) What are some positives for you?? Hang in there! We're almost done! =)

Problem...

So today was another day that my co-op was out sick.  Despite putting up with a really creepy, crazy sub, everything was normal.  However, a scary thought occurred to me:  I don't know how to write lesson plans.  Okay, that's not true.  But I mean in the context of Reynolds Middle School, I don't know how to write lesson plans.   I'm supposed to be writing one Thursday night to teach on Friday, which is a good start.  However, I'm just afraid that my co-op isn't going to be around for very long when i get back next semester, since she's going on maternity leave.

I really don't know how to read the pacing guide either.  I guess my real concern is just how I'm going to keep the classroom where it needs to be next semester when she's not around and I  have a full time sub who doesn't know anything.

I'm not really sure if i'm looking for advice.  Just needed to rant.  Thanks!

Interactive Post

One of the only things I miss about D2L discussion boards is that I felt it was a bit more inviting of interactive discussions between all of us. Maybe it's just me, and it usually is, but I kind of miss that format. That being said, I am hoping to turn this particular post into one that has a bunch of "replies" to it. So, to get the ball rolling, here are a few questions (some directly aimed at one person, and others aimed at the entire group of us):

1 - Marybeth, how is your laid-back style coming along?
2 - Luke, what's been going on in your 20minute class? In fact, anyone else who has that 20 minute class... what have you been doing with it?
3 - Give me one thing that drove you bat-shit in the beginning.. only for you to have conquered that since.
My example: In the beginning, I was very much annoyed by the lack of participation by the same students everyday. While I still struggle with this, I made it a point to start eating lunch in the cafeteria one on one with those students. It actually helped with some of the students. For those who it hasn't, I am still trying different approaches, but at least I have had an experience where I made the situation better. That actually has given me enough juice to keep pushing with the others. Small victories are a beautiful thing.

4 - Give me your worst experience of the semester so far and how you overcame or solved it.
Mine - It was for our first RPG. I wanted to do it with my homeroom kids in their C.A. class. I felt as though the comfort level was the strongest. So, I hit record. About two seconds later, one of the behavioral problem kids started beating the piss out of her desk because she wanted a drink of water. Now, before you think that we were torturing her, we were about 10 minutes from when school started, so she had plenty of time to get a drink before coming to class. Also, it wasn't like I was saying she could never get a drink. I just needed her to wait 5-10 minutes until I was done giving instructions. Well, she kept pounding the desk, which led to her classmates getting out of hand too. I thought that I should try and hurry through the instructions to get the RPG video shot, and then I would address the behaviors. Well, that proved to be the mother of all dumbass moves. It got worse. My co-op removed the desk-pounder, but by then the class was lost. It took me almost 10 minutes to get everything in order. I was demoralized. To makes matters worse, I couldn't even watch the video to see where it went wrong cuz I used the wrong ipad program to record. I felt completely overwhelmed and just wanted to crawl under a rock. That day was the end of my week and I absolutely dreaded coming back the following Monday. I was so worked up over it that I barely slept that Sunday night. Monday morning came.... I walked it and got ready. The opening school bell rang, and I was already sweating. The kids walked in, including the desk-pounder.... who immediately came up to me and said, "Hi, Mr. Houseman! How was your weekend?" I literally was about two seconds away from soiling my pants. I couldn't believe she didn't even remotely show signs of any type of pent up aggression over that day's events. Ever since then, I have learned to keep a short memory, cuz that's what my kids do. Every day is a new day. If you have a bad one, go home and let it go so that tomorrow, when you walk in, it's you who is the one smiling first.

It's not a fool-proof plan, but it sure as hell beats the other way.

Time Flies...

So, with two weeks left in our placements, I figured I'd share some good news. For the first few weeks of my placement, my co-op was very resistant to my ideas and even the idea of having a student teacher. Yes, she signed up for it, but she admits that she had no idea what she was signing on for. For a while, my lesson ideas were shut down or ignored because they were different than the simple "read the book, answer the questions" lesson. Needless to say, I was greeted with a bit of a cold welcome.

However, lately, I have seen a huge change in the dynamic of the classroom. I think that my co-op is realizing that I can be a helpful tool in her classroom even when I am not teaching. My students are writing a research paper, so my co-op is working on the step-by-step grading. While she does that, I can answer questions and guide the students through the writing process. It's been a really exciting experience because I feel like my co-op trusts me with that responsibility whereas before, I think that she was afraid to lose control.

For the first 2 months of my placement, I kept thinking, "Wow, if this is how student teaching is going to be, I'm not sure that this is going to work out." Now I know that my co-op is becoming more open to my teaching ideas, and she seems to be excited to try my lessons. I feel so much better and just wanted to share my excitement with all of you.

Exciting

I'm excited to see that I am contributing something to my classroom. My co-op told me the other day that he really thinks my presence in the room is working out because it has helped him to be rejuvenated about teaching. There are things that he has wanted to do or used to do and just hasn't gotten around to fulfilling for his class. However, he said that I have helped him to get some of those things started in his class. For instance, we now have a stocked in-class library that the students can use for pleasure reading. They can also (with approval) use the library books for their upcoming research project. I also suggested that we have the students do freewrites a couple times a week to get the students more comfortable with writing creatively. My co-op suggested that we use it as a lead-in to a short story unit later in the Spring semester, that way the students see that it is going somewhere. We also asked the students how we could improve the freewrite experience and they gave us a ton of ideas for prompts or inspiration for their writing. It was exciting to see something that I suggested become a major part of the classroom. I mentioned it to my co-op during 2nd period and we started it the same day because he was that excited about it.

Anyone else have exciting ways that they are contributing?

Reflection on 'American Teacher'

Hey gang, so last Tuesday before the break I went to the screening of American Teacher at the downtown campus. This was an opportunity to pre-view and comment on the film that is the "other-side" of 'Waiting For Superman.' It was made by the same people and had some big names attached to it. I was really pumped about this, because 'Waiting For Suprman' really was not fair to us. Unfortunately, this film was obviously made by the same people, and they obviously still do not get it. The entire movie was about money. Basically they expressed that we work a lot and may not get compensated fairly for all that work, uhhhhh duh. Then they showed 4 actual teachers lives, none of whom i thought were exceptionally amazing teachers, and all of whom represented a very small sect of teachers. For instance the Harvard undgrad/Columbia Masters grad who is an elementry teacher and thinks she should be paid a fortune because she went to an Ivy League school. Or the Texas HS teacher who earns $54,000 a year works at a Home Depot 7 days a week all year round and somehow is still in debt up to his ears. Finally the San Fran teacher who they painted to be the greatest of them all who left teaching because he could make double the salary at his familys real estate business, and later said "even if I could make this kind of money teaching I wouldn't go back because the stress level is too high."

What I have to say about all this, is screw the people who made that movie, screw the teachers in that movie and screw anyone who has to watch that movie just to understand that we work hard. You know I worry about a lot of things. I worry about finding a job, I worry that my resume isn't up to par, I worry kids won't like me and I worry that someday I'm gonna pour everything I have into a kid and it won't be enough; that he/she will still fall through the cracks. What I don't worry about, is my salary. Because in the small amount of time I've been in the classroom, I haven't been paid a dime. And being in that classroom makes my life a hell of alot more stressful and I feel liek this is the busiest semester of my life and that I'm constantly burning the candle at both ends. That being said, this is the BEST semester I've ever had, hands down. I love every second that I'm in that classroom and I have already seen the potential we have to make a difference, and when I think about doing that for the rest of my life I cannot wait to get it started.

I'm not an idiot, yes I would love the opportunity to get paid more, and I think we deserve to be paid more. I'm all for teacher evaluations that determine pay or anything else that will compensate GOOD teachers for the work they do. But I can also tell you that my family survived on far less than what that Texas teacher is making. And I can tell you that waking up everyday to go to a job you hate is miserable. So I thank God that I don't have to do that. We're all going to be great teachers and there is no doubt in my mind that we will be richly rewarded, it just may not be monetarily. And if those teachers in the video want to quit over money, then good riddance, cuz you weren't doing it for the reasons anyway.

*I'm sorry to get all preachy and serious on you but I had to get that out

home stretch

My co-op and I have been discussing lesson plans for the final three weeks of my time in the classroom before Christmas break.  He has been very supportive of my ideas and is excited to see me present lessons of my own. All of our classes have started reading A Christmas Carol and this unit will take them straight through to Christmas.  For my first lesson, I have decided to have the students participate in a role playing exercise, similar to our Shakespeare activity in Teaching English, in which students manipulate the actions of other students while sections of dialogue are read aloud.  Tomorrow, I aim to do this with the Scrooge/Marley's ghost dialogue as a way of student's showing their interpretation of Scrooge's terror during this section.  Another initial lesson/reading activity I want to try this week involves students isolating sentences,  phrases, and paragraphs they find value or importance in, and then discussing why students chose the text they did.  This will help students stay focused on the text during classroom readings.  The majority of the novel is read together as a class because of the difficulty of the prose for seventh graders, and students often tend to dismiss the text because someone else is reading.  I'm trying to find ways to keep student's focused on the text and follow along while someone else is reading.  My co-op has suggested that I teach my lessons for the first half of the day and then he'll teach my lessons to the second set of classes, allowing me to observe the changes and alterations he makes to my instruction.  I'm not sure how I feel about this yet, but I think it will be helpful and encourage me to continually improve my lessons.

Absences & Due Dates

My co-op usually follows the structure of introducing a text/theme, assigning independent reading and a worksheet to go along with the reading for her 4th block, "tech" section of English 11, which means students are handing in written work almost everyday. There are a lot of students in this class, probably around 30, and students are frequently absent or in other areas of the school, the resource room or learning support class, during class time. Because of the number of students missing class on a given day, the due dates for the assignments and worksheets are very flexible.

My co-op has a bin where she puts the worksheets for each day so that students know what they missed, but the students still come up to her and ask her to help them figure out what they missed and when it is due. I feel very overwhelmed by this process; I don't know how she stays on top of who missed what and what they need to make-up. Also, because she has flexible due dates for assignments, it means a huge amount of grading work for her at the end of the semester when students realize they need to turn in their work in order to pass. I completely understand why she has flexible due dates with the amount of absences and other things interfering with class work, but I also know that this system is not organized in a way that I feel I can manage in the Spring.

What do your co-ops do? How do they handle make-up work for absent students? What if the students miss an activity in class that they need to do/see in order to complete an assignment? Does your co-op have strict due dates? How frequently are your students receiving feedback (grades or otherwise) on their work?

"Keep Your Head Up"

One of my co-op's biggest pet peeves is when students fall asleep or put their heads down in class. It seems like a sign of disrespect and laziness and she's not alone in taking offense to this act. I never put much thought into the issue until today. It's such a shame that most of them time we fail to put thought into things unless they have some direct impact on us, but such is life. So anyway, what I'm trying to say is...

I haven't gotten a lot of sleep lately. By that I mean, I haven't been able to sleep in days. I wake up every 5 minutes, roll over, groan at the time, close my eyes and pray that this time I'll be able to sleep until morning. I don't think I've gotten more than 2 solid hours of sleep a night, for a number of reasons, and it's draining me. I find myself in conversations, completely listening and trying to digest the information, but unable to recall what happened. I find myself zoning out. Even now as I write this, I can barely focus.

For the first time, I am beginning to understand why these students keep their heads down. They're not being intentionally disrespectful. How can we expect them to learn about themes, imagery, big ideas, and characterization when even keeping their eyes open is a struggle? For whatever reason, these kids aren't getting enough sleep and it's wearing on their academic life. I feel like, at some point, we've all had those days where we know no matter how hard we try nothing is going to get done. We get tired, we get frustrated, and we check out. It's normal. It's natural.

I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with this (probably because in the last week I've gotten the same amount of sleep most people get in a night) but I just wanted to throw it out there that there are so many factors that go into classroom behavior. It's not always disrespect.

Sorry that was so incredibly awful. To be honest, I knew I had to write a post yet this week, and in the half-awake state I'm in, this was the best I could offer.

Time Management in the Classroom

A frequent conversation I have with my co-op is the idea of not having enough time in a period to complete what we want to do. I often get caught up in the mindset that English is the only thing my students need to know, and they should spend all day with me, however, I'm quickly brought back to reality and realize that all of the other subjects are probably thinking the same thing. So, no matter how much I wish, or complain, or get frustrated about it, there's still only 40 minutes in a class period, and I have to do with it what I can. However, sometimes I feel like all of the great stuff we learn in class could never be possible in a classroom when there is only 40 minutes. For example, it would be great to do a free write with my students for 5-10 minutes everyday, but at the end of the week, that's 1/5 of the class time that week that could have been used for something else. Even when planning my unit, I felt like I had to leave out so much stuff, because there is only so much time within the year that I have. I could probably talk about about this for a very long time, but I'm sure you all understand. So I guess my real question for you all is how are you handling time management in your classroom? How much more do you think you could accomplish if you had more time? What kinds of things would you love to do in your classroom, but you don't have the time for?

No, you won't get in trouble for writing something creative.

The other day in class my co-op introduced me to a genius lesson idea. She had this children's book, The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg (the guy who wrote Jumanji andPolar Express). According to the fictional editor's note, the story is a collection of illustrations by a guy named Harris Burdick, who disappeared before releasing the stories that go along with the pictures. These mystery illustrations are presented in the book. Here's an example:

For the assignment, the students had to carefully examine the illustration as a "setting" and imagine what sort of plot might be inferred from the setting. They would identify if they thought the plot was going to be "happy" or "sad," whether the character seemed evil or good and what in the illustration gave them that impression. I was stoked about the idea, but I couldn't help thinking how awesome this would work as a starting off point, a prompt, for the students to write their own narratives, and the objectives of the lesson could be achieved that way as well. It was my co-op's lesson so I couldn't really make any changes but I did tell one group of students that I was working with (they finished up the assigned work quickly) that they should just starting writing a story with the line in the picture being the first line of their stories. One of the boys in the group looked up at me and asked, "will we get in trouble?" I almost burst out laughing, but at the same time it was terrible that the students have gotten to do so little creative writing in class that they see it as something they could get in trouble for.

I'm looking forward to try and get more creative writing in the classroom I'm a part of. Steve gave me a great idea that I'm going to put into effect this Friday. I'm going to use the 20 minute block of time that my homeroom is waiting for lunch as my own creative writing class. I'm going to start having the students do free writes and sharing their writing with classmates. I'm still working on the details but I'm psyched to get this going. Any suggestions for guiding 7th graders through their (probably) first creative writing experience would be much appreciated, thanks!

-Luke Damiani

Ning Conversation

I have been thinking about pairing a film with the Catcher in the Rye for our unit plan, but haven't really found one I totally love....so I posed a question on the ning, "making curriculum pop," and have been totally overwhelmed with awesome ideas! I posted a question on the ning this summer for my "teaching with film" course, and received a similar outpouring of ideas. I would recommend signing up for the ning and using this as a resource for your unit plans if you are struggling.

As a side note, John Golden responded to my thread (very exciting) and he recommended a film that I had thought about in the beginning, but kind of put on the back burner. Now that he mentioned it, I kind of feel validated and I think I am going to revisit it and really consider incorporating it into the unit.

Link to the ning: http://mcpopmb.ning.com/

Link to my question/convo: http://mcpopmb.ning.com/group/teachwmovies/forum/topics/catcher-in-the-rye-film?xg_source=activity

Grammar Time

My co-op and I have started the grammar unit for our classes. While most English teachers, along with their students, dread this part of the year, I am mildly enthusiastic about it. Fortunately, I am right in the middle of Transformational Grammar, so all of the concepts being taught are fresh in my head. More importantly, I have alternative methods to help the students understand traditional grammar concepts, particulary the functions of parts of speech, thanks to Shields. On Monday of this week, I watched my co-op teach noun functions to the first two periods, and I then taught the remaining classes. As I was watching him, I was frustrated to see that he was mutilating certain grammatical concepts, specifically indirect objects (he kept confusing them with objects of prepositions). Anyway, when I took over, I tried, perhaps unsuccessfully, to give the students a variety of methods to identify the functions, often resorting to what Shields has told us in class. I think the most motivating part of the lesson, for me, was that I was implementing more contemporary strategies within traditional grammar, and I felt as though I was rebeling against our schools' preposterous infatuation with traditionally taught grammar. I always imagined myself being one of the teachers who held contempt towards teaching grammar, but after Monday I feel confident that I might be able to succeed in this content area and helps students gain a practical appreciation for it as well.

Homework? What's that?

Okay here is my vent of the day: Why is getting students to do their homework like pulling teeth???

I am leading the honors class through their novel (which is on top of their regular classwork) and every time I assign homework, they always moan and complain. Here's the kicker: the only day they get homework in every other class is on Fridays!!! I'm giving them reading assignments and worksheets to go with it, so it's not impossible and should only take they 30 minutes tops to finish it, but it's like pulling teeth! I "lost it" (okay not really, but I was really frustrated) today in class because they have had the book over a week now, have only been assigned the first four chapters, and yet I still have over half the class who didn't even start the book. When I told them they had a test on the first five chapters on Friday, it was like the floodgates opened and all of the excuses started pouring out. The only thing I could do what stress to them the test is going to be open book, but they were encouraged to read because they would need to know where to find answers in the book.

I had to giggle during class today because I was going over what their homework assignments were throughout the week and the assistant principle walked in and listened to me haven the class repeat back to me what their homework was. It was when one of the students said, "Miss we get it," yet he couldn't tell me what his homework was. I just looked at him and said nothing. It was the assistant principle who looked at the student and said, "Really???" The thing is, it's like that every day!

Now that I've vented longer than I wanted to, does anybody have any suggestions on how to get the students more involved and doing their homework? My co-op and I really don't know what to do at this point.


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