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About Me
- Dr. Susan Ferguson
- I teach English Education, Foreign Language Education, and ESL Education, and I advise STEM Education Majors at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama--and I LOVE IT! I love to invite others to find the poet that is within them--I am certain a poet lies within each of us!
Hi guys. Today I taught the pronoun-antecedent lesson. I used the textbook sentences, and then had them write their own. 7th grades are so egotistical; they love themselves, so I had them write sentences about themselves. They thought that was fun because we read them out loud. I asked my coop teacher about the Valentines card activity. She said that I can do it with the advanced class only. They get to have all the fun. By the way, I am still grading myth papers.
ReplyDeleteWell I have to say that today was BUENO! My kids had their culture day and they did a haikus in spanish, made valentine in Spanish, and created a Valentine cookie for someone special. I have to give kudos to my kids because I invited special ed and each of them were assigned to a partner to help. My kids were so polite and even found time to finish their own agenda. I had a great day but I am tired. I have not heard yet about if the study aboard trip has been approved. I hope hear something soon. Danielle, I think it is fun to have themed activities because kids seem to response well and usually are extremely productive.
ReplyDeleteJenny, I'm so glad your culture day went well. I think it is great you invited the Special Ed kids. It sounds like you are really implementing the ideas we are learning in methods class into your classroom, way to go! My advanced students create their valentine cards today. My teacher suggested I let them use t.v. characters because they were struggling to come up with ideas for literature characters (even the advanced kids do not like to read- so sad). Some of them used Mickey/Minnie Mouse, Donald/Daisy Duck, SpongeBob/Pearl, and various other cartoon characters. I read a couple of them out loud, and they all laughed. We also went to the library and I was excited because I was able to get 1 student to check out a mythology book. (1 student, LOL!)
ReplyDeleteYEAH! I am thrilled that it went well. Did you take any pics, Jennifer?
ReplyDeleteLadies,
ReplyDeleteIn spite of what I thought was a great introductory lesson to a writing workshop, my coop. teacher did not wish to continue with a highly involved writing unit. Due to "time constraints," we had to push ahead and begin reading the novel she had planned. Danielle, I too wanted to incorporate the Valentines card activity from our class. Alas, time was an issue once again.
Last week was crazy. We were still working on the poetry unit. We also were able to give our kids time to work on making Haiku Quilt pieces. Of course this comes from our precious Ms Piper. The faculty and Dr Crowell loved them. Some of the ideas we share in class really have worked well for our class. You all keep up the good ideas and advice!
ReplyDeleteMy cooperating teacher is trying her very hardest to get her students ready for the writing exam on Thursday. Because of all the preparation we have been doing for the writing test I haven't been able to do as much teaching as I have wanted to. I can sort of relate you what you are doing Brad. I want to be able to do creative things with the students, but beacuse of a test deadline there is not a whole lot of room for anything extra (extra as in anything not strongly suggested by administrators and proven by teachers to help prepare students for the test).
ReplyDeleteHey everyone!
ReplyDeleteLast week was a crazy week for me as well. It seems like every time I turn around the school is having some kind of big assembly right in the middle of class. I know that this frustrates my cooperating teacher, and I can really see why. The class that gets all the disruptions happens to be her AP class, and there is so much to cover in that class. Last Friday was basically a bust thanks to a cultural diversity assembly. Not all the students had to go, but of course the class was almost empty, so what do you do? Anyway, I can really see how this can be something that is hard to work around, especially when you have everything planned out for weeks at a time (due to the amount of material covered and the time constraints). Other than that, I get to teach again on Wednesday. I do not think that I like teaching Seniors, especially in the Spring semester. We will see how it goes and I will let you know next week.
Sarah,
ReplyDeleteYou completely set up what I wanted to talk about this week. Ursula and I had given the class two weeks to complete a figurative language book in which the students listed literary devices such as metaphor and alliteration, and then illustrated them; however, we had many of the students missing on some of those days due to "recruitment" trips the kids were going on to the surrounding elementary schools. Not only did were the recruitment trips interfering, but also the rehearsals.
It all boils down to the fact that on the day the booklets were due (this friday), none of the students had them ready; we received one excuse after another. It was really frustrating. What are you supposed to do when 75% of the class does not have what you had asked of them? We had to give them the weekend to finish. I agree that such things as outside assemblies totally put the brakes on some really cool lessons. I can't speak for Ursula, but I know that I'm not skilled enough to wing such things like that just yet.
Paige
Hello everybody! It sounds like you all have had some interesting weeks! I just wanted to say that you are now getting a true look at what it means to be a teacher. :) You spend so much time planning these great lessons out day-by-day and then the school throws and assembly or half your students are out of the room. I know how frustrating it can be. Don't worry about "winging it," though. My department chair always says that a teacher's best weapon is the fact that the students don't really know what you have planned. Just adjust your schedule as best you can without seeming flustered. As for Rachel's concern with standardized testing, I currently teach one of the courses that is end-tested. It's tough trying to include creative projects when administration wants you to get high test scores. DON'T GIVE THAT UP! The best you can do is just stick the activities in when you can. Students will respond better to your creative learning activities because they will be a break from the test prep that your administration wants you to do.
ReplyDeleteYou all sound like you are having a range of experiences and handling them well. I look forward to your next weeks' posts! :)
Thank you, Brittany. You are absolutely right. While there are so many interruptions, so many tests, it is imperative to student engagement that we work in as many high interest activities as possible. The real key is to use high interest activities to address the skills on CRTs and on other standardized exams. This comes with experience, but the sooner you can discover how to do both effectively, the more content and excited you will be as a teacher, and the less likely you will be to experience burnout.
ReplyDeleteWell I had a pretty hard week last week. Baseball season started and a new round of teachers getting released at our school chatter. I also had to be on the textbook adoption committee, thank goodness it only took one vote. We still had to stay until 2:30 and discuss the book further, what a joke. Anyway I hope to see everyone in my class soon.
ReplyDeleteYeah...this week, we also did poetry for Valentine's and the kids loved it. Like I said in class, its kind of hard to do since in German 1, the students' knowledge of the language is so very limited. We didn't do haikus, per se, they were allowed to do whatever they liked. They were allowed to make it in English first and then try to translate. It was fun. A few of them told me later that they gave theirs to their parents or someone else in the class. They were really excited to do something aside from Grammar and the German 2s did a great job on theirs without my help.
ReplyDeleteRachel,
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately there are always things like that going on where you can't do things like you plan or like you want it to...that's one thing that I'm slowly having to get used to in public school. It's a real pain for everyone.
In my 10th grade classes we really concentrated on writing for the ADAW, even though I feel that I'm getting worse at teaching writing. My firt year teaching 7th grade, I didn't know what the ADAW was so I didn't "teach" it. We wrote every day about everything we could think of, and I didn't grade for 6 Traits because I had never heard of 6 Traits. Instead, I simply helped them along with ideas and told them how great they were doing. Their previous teachers must have been great because when the scores came back they had improved over 50% from the year before. On Valentines we did a version of the candy hearts project we did in class Monday and they loved it. In my 11th grade class we continued reading A Raisin in the Sun. It is loads of fun for the students who are reading parts but I think some of the others are zoning out. I've tried switching reading parts, and that has worked out some, but I think some of the students who wouldn't sign up for a part wish they had once they heard how badly some of the readers read. I know I keep saying next time, but, next time I'm going to think this through a little more. The 11th graders also loved making "conversations" with the candy.
ReplyDelete