Month: February 2016

I haven’t been doing much teaching in my placement, instead observing, assisting, and occasionally planning and implementing activities into my mentor teacher’s lessons.

On Monday, I had planned an activity that used “trading cards” of celestial bodies to teach about classification.  The activity was initially planned as a way to introduce the classification scheme for celestial bodies, but my mentor teacher had given a lecture on that the previous Friday. I, instead, modified my activity to still include the classification, but to also work as an assessment, where students had to match the cards to the classification schemes they had already learned.

This was very engaging, particularly for students who are typically disengaged, because of the tactile component of it.  Students were given 20 cards with a celestial body’s name and image on one side and a few facts on the back (radius, distance from sun, what it is made of, etc).  Instead of looking at pictures on a powerpoint slide, the physically manipulated the trading cards, allowing them to create meaning by developing their own classification scheme, asking guiding questions that led them to think about the usefulness/purpose of classification, and then assessing their abilities to classify based on the scheme used by scientists.

The first page of the worksheet was the initial activity, but I had added a second page for this formative assessment of students’ ability to classify bodies into stars, planets, dwarf planets, asteroids, and comets.  Some groups of students had started to make the connection before they turned to the second page, and others had come up with their own, different classification schemes that they had to rethink.

I was really happy with this activity and am looking into adapting it to other parts of this class (classification of galaxies, having students create their own constellation stories).  While I know they learned because they were able to successfully classify independently, I was most pleased by the engagement of the students.  All students worked diligently and on task for the entire activity, no students questioned why we were doing it, and I had no issues with classroom management.  This activity, being well planned and research based (I adapted it from NASA), gave me a good teaching day.

This was the first week of my second semester Astronomy class. I got to start the class with the students and have been trying to introduce my own norms into the classroom procedures.  We have covered the Big Bang so far and will be starting Celestial Bodies on Monday, for which I have a neat activity planned where the students have to develop their own classification schemes.  In Physics, we will be finishing up Waves and Sound and moving towards Wave, Light, and Optics (my edTPA unit). In Forensics, we are finishing up our unit on Handwriting and about to start Drugs and Toxicology.  In Biology, students just took their Evolution and Natural Selection exam and are moving on to classification.  I am hoping to do a similar classification activity in Biology as I do with Astronomy.

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This past week, student are getting used to seeing me in the halls, classrooms, and after school. I am a more permanent fixture and as such they are respecting me more and understanding that I enforce the same rules as other teachers.  That being said, there are some students who want to push that.  In my Forensics class on Wednesday, my mentor teacher had to step out towards the end of class to pick up photocopies. This was fine, it had happened before, and all students were working on their assignment (they were analyzing a ransom note and handwriting samples to determine who had stolen another teacher’s smartboard).

My mentor teacher coaches two sports, and as such, he is close with many of the athletes in school, even those who do not take his classes. Every day during the announcements, one of his baseball players comes in to see his girlfriend as his class is right next door. This isn’t a big deal, as the announcements follow the end of the period when no more instruction is happening.

This Wednesday, the student came in before the announcements, sat down at the teachers desk, scrolled through his email, and then turned to start talking to the group of students closest to the desk who were currently working on their assignment.  As soon as I saw this, I walked over to him and quietly told him he needed to stand up and leave the room.  He did. As soon as the bell rang signaling the beginning of the announcements, he came back it.

I asked him, “____, didn’t I just kick you out of this classroom?” to which he and other student responded that he always comes in here during announcements.  I backed off, unsure if I had the authority to press the issue.

Now, I don’t know the student well, but I do know he is an athlete. I am sure I have some underlying assumptions about him that resulted in me being more concerned than I needed to be about him coming back during the announcements.  If I had communicated to him why he was wrong to come in during class instead of rushing to get him out, I wouldn’t have as if he didn’t respect me or understand my reasoning for telling him to leave the first time.  When he came back, I felt small.

I wish I had employed more of Needs Theory, understanding why he had come in to my classroom while he was still in another (AP!) class next door. In the future, I will look for underlying causes of these behaviors, especially for students I too easily consider trouble-makers.  Additionally, I will consider how I hold students accountable for their behavior. What was the intention of this student? Was his class simply wrapping up and he figured ours was as well? Did he see that my mentor teacher was out of the room and as such he couldn’t get in trouble? Why did he come back? Was it because it was his routine? Or was it as an affront to my authority of removing him earlier?

In my life, I always try to assume best intentions, but this is a emotional/behavioral pattern adapted after high school. I am struggling to take it with me into the classroom, likely because I’ve never used it in a high school setting.  I will continue to work at assuming best intentions of students and allowing that to influence my classroom management and disciplinary procedures.

Lesson One: Students want Differentiation

My mentor teacher has five different preps this year.  This gives me the opportunity to see students at different ages and dispositions engaging with science. It also means I have 9th grade students struggling through LE Biology, 11th grade students disengaged with their last science class, an elective in Forensic Science, and 12th grade students who are so academically advanced they are bored in College Physics.  Meeting the needs of all these students is daunting, but so important. One student reminded me that even if it is more work for me, the students, and the mentor teacher, it is important to provide each student with the developmentally appropriate differentiation they need to succeed. This student, who struggles in Biology, announced to his table-mates – “You know what would be a good idea? If you got an individualized review packed based on your grade in the class. Because some people need more review than others.” This student wanted to ask for more work, because he knew he needed more review than some of his classmates.

 

Lesson Two: Teaching is Personal

My mentor teacher was out on Wednesday, and while there was a substitute in the room and on record, I acted as the lead teacher. I found it incredibly challenging to take my mentor teachers plans and implement them, because it is much less genuine to adapt another’s plans than to create your own. I found myself trying to incorporate formative assessment in a lesson where historically there was little student talk. I was surprised with the amount of push-back I received from the students, who were more concerned with finishing the review than ensuring that each student was learning. Students called out for me to speed up, fearing that we wouldn’t finish going over the extensive problem set, which their exam the following day would be based on. I, suddenly afraid of and for the students, speed up, but found that it resulted in me talking more and faster, no student talk, and empty pauses as the students called out for me to wait, they hadn’t finished copying down the answer.  This, then, became my assessment. The students wanted me to speed up, because they valued the write answer over understanding and sharing in the process.

 

Lesson Three: Students are Complex

Yesterday, another teacher came into my classroom to meet with my mentor teacher. They were discussing a student I have in two classes and her issues with turning in work on time. I found out that she had so much missing work, that she had been tirelessly trying to make up before the marking period ended, because she had missed much of the past month of school. She was homeless, and had been staying with a family member in another county. She was now back in school, but struggling to find places to stay each week. It suddenly made sense – she was often doing other work in classes rather than paying attention to the tasks at hand. She was trying to finish schoolwork before she left for the day and had more important things to worry about.  Later that day, I ended up grading her make up work and it became apparent that she didn’t understand any of the last unit, but she took the test and quizzes to get partial credit. I am struggling with what I can do – I want to offer to help her catch up, as the class is often cumulative, and if she doesn’t understand this unit, she will be lost for much of the rest of the year. At the same time, she clearly had other things on her mind, and while I mentioned earlier that some students want the extra work, I don’t want to put more on her plate than is already there. I am hoping to meet with the counseling office next week to discuss what solutions can be found.