Summer YEH!

Summer school is over. We have conquered and no one drowned! Our last field trip was on the Mississippi Queen and 200 kids and 10 adults spent three hours in the hot sun going up and down the river. IT WAS GREAT! I got sunburnt but there was lots of water and music. We got to go up and down the locks and spent some time looking for wild birds. The kids had a great time and we all bonded. Not one child threw up and we even had a picnic when we got back. We had a pinata and even dried fruit in wrappers- since we don't allow candy at school. I was amazed at how the kids entertained themselves when at school I am constantly hearing 'I'm Bored." I start Responsive Classroom 2 in one week and want to see if it is as fun as RC 1 was. I am eager to see what they have to for us to do and can't wait for Monday to come around. Check back later.

Teaching Summer School!

Today we got our contracts and I found out that I am teaching summer school. It is going to be tons of fun, with experiments, projects, and maybe even Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream! This year has had a lot of ups and downs. I am through two years of teaching and my first year at Augsburg. It has been hard doing both but I am glad that I have bonded well with my classmates and the kids I teach. I have noticed that I am the only practicing teacher in most of my classes. This gives me a different perspective and my ideals and different then theirs. I think that there are lots of thing to learn out there and I am very excited to do it. This blog started as a way to getting my frustrations out and has since turned into a journal of things that I want to learn and stuff I would like to do. Who knows what it will turn into next year?

MAP Testing

Today we are MAP testing. This is the first year that we have done this test and so far I am seeing improvement on all the kids RIT scores. Its amazing how well they focus when they really want to. The only thing I am unhappy about with this test is that it is computerized. So I am watching kids that can't navigate the screens get lower scores because they are pushing the wrong buttons. We also test the Kindergartners with this same system. They are having to drag and drop without having the hand span to move the mouse properly. Maybe we should rethink how we test the younger kids when it comes to computerized testing.

Groundhogs Day

It's February 2nd and the Groundhog has seen his shadow, so a million more days of winter are waiting. It is good in a way because it gives me more time to keep up with this blog. We are working on HTML in 8th grade and the kids need one on one help. Right now I am in the middle of preparing for my Reading First interview. This collaboration of teachers meets each week to talk about reading strategies and share their experiences. It was my turn to videotape myself teaching Inferring strategies and I did it with the third grade class. You really learn about how you teach when you teach something completely different then you are used to. I found that teaching this strategy was a great experience. I used the Detective LaRue books and the kids wrote post its on what was going on in between the lines in order to show how they inferred what was happening.

@ssessment

January 2006- It is assessment time again. There are lots of things that I love about teaching, but assessment using a scantron is not one of them. I have given a lot of tests in the past 1.5 years of teaching and have found that I prefer to give kids projects instead of unit tests. As an interactive teacher I like to assess kids with one on one conversations, small group discussions and even short writing assignments where they can tell me what they know in a low stress environment.

Tests that have worked best for me:
1. Projects- kids get to express their ideas in their own ways.
2. Writing Assignments- every student can tell what they know without worry about the right answer.
3. Conferencing- when you have the time and resources this assessment builds student/teacher relationships and can get you the best results.

EBD Enrichment

Today was the first day of Technology Enrichment for the EBD kids in the school. I volunteered to take these four boys twice a week to help them work on their social skills and programming skills. This was my brainchild and I am proud of it. But it was a hard class- the boys fought most of the time. They called each other bad names and I was forced to be more of a referee then a teacher for this period of time.

What I learned:
1. AHHHHHHH- take more time to introduce subjects in an interactive way.
2. Keep your cool when things are thrown at your head- especially chairs.
3. Always go over the class rules at the beginning of the period.

Pe@ce at NVS

Today is the first day of school and the kids have just left. It was great first day with new faces and old friends coming back. We made a peace chain today that I took a picture of. All the kids made their hopes and dreams pictures and I had them do one too on a picture of MAC with wings- they thought it was hilarious. This year I learned from last year. I did not play silent ball but instead we circled up and talked about what we learned over the summer and how we were going to take those lessons into this year. All of my classes went really well and the kids and I decided that next week we would sit down with our curriculum and talk about what assignments would fit each of the standards. I am glad to see some of my 7th graders back and hope that they are happy here again. As such a small school we have a close community that allows for certain freedoms but can also stifle some kids. The middle school students do not have a lot of freedom to choose classes or go from class to class by themselves. It is hard to see them learning how to navigate in a large high school without the practice of a big middle school.

As a teacher I can help them by giving more projects and self-motivated asssignments. This will allow them to be independent and try different things.