I feel as if I have been pulled through the ringer. I am fresh back today from my dad's farewell in Denver and I feel as if I am chasing my tail trying to catch up from a long absence. I really dislike being gone from school, and I think I have been gone far more this year already than I have ever expected. I have awesome kids though and know that with each new day, I will be given multiple opportunities to catch-up. I am emotionally stable. I feel at peace with his passing, though I am still sad. I will forever miss him and all that he is to me. I know he is still looking out for me in all I do and I am grateful for that.
Reflection of the past two weeks- really? Did I miss that many? Wow. Okay, so reflections of teaching the 11th grade English classroom- I feel like I have a great plan of attack for writing really crummy sentences and helping the kids develop solid paragraph structure. I believe we still have a ton of work to do, but the foundation is being laid and the work has been put in place. I will consistently refer back to my Sentence Prescriptions for writing and The Writing Guide by CASA. They need the information and they need to put it into practice. I have read through a few "corrected" paragraphs and we still have work, but at least I know where I need to move forward with them. We may spend a day going back through and making even more corrections than I had anticipated. All in due time. I hope to find that the smaller stuff will only support the bigger stuff as we move into dialogue and the Narrative Essay. I did not focus on the descriptive, so I will make sure to include small lessons on description this week. Writing my teaching thoughts is already helping to pull me back into my reality.
The not so good part of the lessons: the plan of attack for writing the prescriptions is to switch papers and allow multiple students to write on one piece of paper, different types of sentences about one topic. This worked really well with the exception that we ran out of time- future use for this day: we will not have bell work on that day and they will switch all hour. I had to break it up into two days, and that was a weak link in the process.
Reflections for teaching the 10th grade English classroom- I just have to say this and you will read this line over and over again- I love my Sophomores! They are bright, driven and totally into whatever it is I am teaching! It is a joy to not have the attitude and to see the interest as they accept the challenges I place before them.
We have been working on Ethos, Logos, and Pathos and have entered our next unity of Humanity. We are starting with "Contents of a Dead Man's Pocket" short 48 sec video. They had to use words to describe what they saw, what they heard and how it made them feel In 4 groups, we placed the word strips on the walls and determined the most common ideas. We then learned how to use one Google Doc cooperatively as we took the words from the walls and wrote them down every time they appeared. Once we finished this, I created a word cloud and we discussed the idea of theme: the life lessons taught in film, books, short stories. I believe they were amazed to see that they were able to pull multiple ideas from the video and all were applicable to the idea of theme. I am anxious for us to read the story and apply ethos, logos, and pathos to the literature as well as determine theme. We will then move into discussion circles and learn how to apply new thoughts and ideas to works of literature.
The not so great part of the lesson: I was not fully prepared to wrap the lesson up. I only came up with the idea for the word cloud and theme after talking the lesson over with Michele Charles, so really I don't have any regrets for this. I did find out that when using one doc, it helps to have kids write their names on the form to claim a spot for themselves. I loved this and will use it again in the future.
Plans for this class include a QR search for Author notes and a reading using Cornell Notes in order to have a deeper understanding of the story. I am excited to put this into action.
I hope I have fulfilled enough for the two week requirements. I am looking forward to my personal life calming down and hoping to see a growth with my students as we develop this year.
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