Tuesday

Tuesday seems like it was forever ago thanks to the snow day we had yesterday. One thing I've been trying to do consistently is take notes either during class when students are working on their own or right after class so any observations are fresh in my mind. This has been useful in not only writing my reflections but also talking with H about how each class went. 

Period Five - English 9
First, I collected student work. The students had three things to turn in, all of which they had plenty of in class time to work on. That being said, I would estimate that I received about half to three-quarters the amount of work I should have received. And this was after students tried to hurriedly finish their assignments in class as I was collecting them. Which reminds me that I need to talk to H about the policy for this. While I'm totally fine with a rolling deadline of sorts for students, I know that SMHSNC has a specific late work policy for the freshman, and since I am part of the school, I need to make sure I am following the policy. After I started to feel like turning in their homework was taking way too much time, and H spoke to them about this, I told them that we were just going to move on, which we did.
Because this was the second day of this lesson with the freshman, I felt comfortable leading the lesson about The Poison Tree and guiding students through the poem. Between the Springboard Teacher's Edition and having H model the lesson for me with Period One, I knew which areas of the poem to focus on and how to help them make the connections that they needed to. With a small class like this, it was harder to get them talking, but that might also have been partially related to me being the one leading the lesson. We're still getting to know each other and they're trying to figure out what kind of a teacher I am, so I expect there will be some awkwardness/discomfort for a little while longer. One benefit of small class sizes, however, is that I'm able to move students onto the next activity at their own pace. This is helpful with classroom management because it keeps students from having down time to cause trouble and distract their classmates. It also means that I've got different students at different stages of the lesson plan, some finishing earlier than others. I'm going to start using any free time students have after they finish to work on vocabulary and roots. I'm thinking that using exit tickets more might also be helpful, so that the students are accountable and I'm able to see what progress they're making.

Period Six - English 10
Even though I don't have H to model what the lesson is supposed to look like, I have the Springboard teacher's edition, so I can pretty much figure out what to do with them. During this class we went through their homework, which was to deconstruct the prompt for their assessment. Springboard does a nice job of scaffolding the activities so that students are ready for the assessments. After a quick review of the elements of a prompt, students were able to start working on their essay in class. I'm always a little wary of giving students in class time like this, not because I don't want them to have the opportunity to work on their homework, but because a lot of students won't use their in class time wisely if not being constantly told what to do. Period six surprised me though. Not everyone worked the entire time, but for the most part, there was some significant progress made. Some students even managed to finish their essays in class. (I wish I could remember the last time I was able to start and finish a draft of an essay in class!) For homework they are to  finish their drafts if they hadn't done so. I am curious to see how many come to class with a completed draft.

Period Seven - English 9
Round two with the 9ers today. This class was pretty much identical to period five. Some areas I noticed in my teaching that could use improvement are my transitions and my classroom management. I don't really have any transitional strategies other than verbal cues, and so far they don't seem to be working that well for me. I'm losing a lot of class time because of this, so I need to find some ways to improve my strategies. As far as classroom management, I tend to stick to proximity and the "teacher stare" because those typically are the strategies that work best for me. I also prefer proximity because when students are working independently I am able to check in with each of them to see how they are doing. However, I don't really use proximity when I'm doing whole group instruction, so that's when I rely on the teacher stare. So far this works for the most part, but I could benefit from adding a few tricks to my bag.