I must say writing a blog every week is great. However, I am sure my readers are getting tired of reading about my freshman. But what can I say. The other only other class that pushes bottoms is my building construction class. I only have 5 students that are all boys. This past week we started the woodworking unit. I started class off by the students drawing me a plan of a tissue box. This took longer than I thought. I was under the thought that all but one students has already taken man tech before so they should know how to draw and read a plan. This is not true. None of them drew or made a project off of a plan. I feel that I could have been better prepared to teach this if I went in thinking that the students know nothing. On Wednesday, the students started in the shop on cutting the wood. Thursday when I came back the students were still cutting wood. I was pleased to see that they were using their plans. However, come Friday, I called in sick and had Mrs. Fry have the students finishing cutting their projects out thinking that they would finish. Well later that day, I received a text from Mrs. Fry with a complete project cut out but to my surprise it was hers. She states that the boys complained saying they did not have enough time to cut it all. So she proved them wrong and in one block was able to cut all pieces out.
Now back to my starting statement about how you all may be tired of hearing about my freshman but here goes. I started a new unit on plant science and was struggling. My first lesson was an introduction of how plants are important. I had the students go to the board and write why they thought plants were important. Then sent a student to the office. Backing up, Joe was kicked out of school for 10 days due to having weapons on campus. Last Friday was his first day back. He was starting to swear in class and I warned him about it and then when asked to go to the board with the class he jumped up and started to shot "marijuana, I like that stuff". I was in the middle of a sentence to a student and stopped looked at Joe and said "Go to the office" To my surprise there was no fighting. He left and did not come back at all during that block. After that when I have Joe in my class he sits there and does not talk out or cause anymore trouble. Check one for me!
Along with dealing with Joe's problems, I was a bit disappointed in my plant science this week. I was to do a lesson on the plant parts and had a hard time of coming up with how to make it not so "childish". This did not happen. I am going to bring this lesson with me to our meeting on Friday and see if anyone can help me out.
Till next time........
Val,
ReplyDeleteJust a quick reminder to read through your blog before you publish. Make sure you are using proper grammar and are writing in complete sentences.
The biggest thing I see as a reoccurring theme is that students are less than engaged in your lessons. This may be because of a couple reasons. It may be because the pace of class is too slow, which can be improved by spending more time planning and incorporating more learning activities/opportunities or utilizing teaching methods such as IBI or PBL. Another reason students may be disengaged is because the felt need is not established. Its really important to intrigue students with the lesson by establishing a felt need, making them excited about the upcoming lesson! Think about what would be applicable, relevant, and important to a high school student. Although we might find something way cool, it may not be as cool to a high school student until you put a spin on it that makes it more directly tied to them and where they are at in their life.
Sounds like the plant science lesson would be a great lesson to utilize in the tuning protocol activity. Remember, you need to make sure you are bringing student evidence with you to make the feedback more meaningful. Your peers need to see how the students were performing and how it could be improved.
Let me know if you have questions.
Laura