Week 10 and 11

Week 10

Getting back to the pace of things was hard than I thought it would be. This week I’ve been more tired than I’ve ever been since I’ve started teaching. This lack of energy on my part unfortunately seemed to carry over into my students’ motivation and excitement about class. I imagine its hard to be excited about Quarter Two when your teacher is yawning while talking about it.

Nevertheless—the students were happy to be back (I think) and I was happy to have them back. Though I realized that I had to quickly get them and myself back into the mood of things. The relationships that we had built up from last quarter did carry over, but the classroom expectations seemed to have become lax. Because of this I had to address some behaviors that hadn’t been present in the last quarter.

With this I moved to quickly to go over existing class procedures, as well as to introduce some new ones. These new procedures attempt an interweaving remediation with the general progress by reviewing and grading homework daily in class. With this we go over the problems with each other and try to address together misunderstanding.

GOOD: I reacted to the student’s needs in terms of enacting new procedures.

BAD: I’ve got to do better at changing the way I do class in order to keep students’ interest. This might mean more games, group work, and real life connections.

Week 11

Because of the changes to the school schedule there has been some pressure to keep up and make sure students get to the breadth of material as opposed to delving into the material. This has been compounded more so with the pressure to keep up with the test which will test them on all the material. My reaction to this at first was to take a larger role in classes pulling student through the material. This was not that well received. Students getting pulled through math—that’s not the best class culture.

So noticing this I immediately took to having a smaller role in class. Making sure I made the most detailed and interpretable guided notes possible—I took to giving the student groups copies of the notes and letting them have at it. After a timed group work session I would recap asking clarification questions as a check for understanding and a way to correct. After this they would be let loose on their homework.

Also I took to adding remediation games where students are motivated support their group mates’ understanding of the material. I’ve also been able to use these games to weave in spiraled objectives’ remediation.

GOOD: I was able to boost student involvement with the new structure of class. The remediation games seem to be going well. The new homework

BAD: I have to work on making sure that everyone is fully understanding the material.