Thinking...

I started to plan for next year. Upon analysis of my own abilities to teach, I realize that I have an issue with timing. It seems that in a good week, getting the timing of a lesson to layout properly is still a bit of a struggle. In my perfect educational world, I believe my lessons should be no more than 3 days, but they often stretch to 5 or 6- especially when they involve a large amount of reading. That is what has prompted the early lesson development.

I asked my students who will be leaving me next year what I should keep and what needs to not be re-visited. To my delight, they all told me that I do not really have anything that needs to be tossed. Hands down, they all told me to keep the bell work. It was the number one tool that they all were glad they had worked on throughout this year. They came in from taking the ACT and said the very first test that they took was all about the bell work- correcting spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes in sentences. I was very surprised!

The next activity comes from my Great Expectations training last summer- they all told me to keep the creeds and to keep the classroom bonding activities. Several students said that I needed to keep these as it really helped them to be able to work together as a class, in small groups, or even as a pair. They told me that it made a big difference, so I plan to incorporate a new activity on the first day back from every long break: summer, Christmas, and spring breaks. I have found that they are reluctant to work on those days, and if I come in with something unexpected, they just might shake off the back to school blues and get motivated to work! It will be interesting!

A very positive change occurred this week- I copied the test exemplars, laminated the parts for each: the reading and questions, split them into groups, and gave them a highlighter and a "cheat sheet" to help determine the area of focus for the type of questions that were asked. Almost all got busy, and I saw so much effort and thought across the board! It was awesome! I just finished grading them. Those that finished made high marks- those that played, well they earned the mark that they received...and those were just a handful of kiddos. I loved this! It gave them a chance to break apart the questions that they will see on the  EOI, and it made them really process the stories, no matter how "boring" they thought they were.

All in all, the past week was a success! Another week down and moving forward!

9 weeks and counting...

Ah! 9 weeks left! This year has flown! I have high hopes for the next quarter- kiddos getting in their late work, fulfilling requirements and making a strong "Hail Mary" to finalize this next step.

I am not oblivious to the fact that many are coming off of spring break with zombie-like attitudes, and they will not actually wake up until the last 3 weeks of school. I will hold them like I do my sweet chicks that hatched for us just this morning! Five and counting! They are so CUTE!!! I hope we will have 25 when all is done...oh I have spring fever!!

Moving forward, we are facing testing at the end of April, but before then, writing, writing, writing for my sophomores and reading the most famous "White Man" essay- "The Declaration of Independence"- the greatest of all argumentative essays ever written- purely opinion based of course! I have not looked at it in a few years, but when I taught my son's English III class, they really got into the argument! I had a husky, dreaming-to-be fire-fighter, and his large red-headed best friend preaching the ideas from the famous document, fist in hand and telling classmates to be quiet and listen closely...we will see how this group of kids respond! I am excited to open the ancient document! It should be interesting!

Moving forward to more baseball games, soccer, softball, track, cheer, football training, prom, senior trips, etc., our days will be fast and moving forward quickly! The days will be a blur!

Much love

There is so much love on this day! The kids are hyped full of sugar and kisses galore and not much learning is accomplished! :) Oh well! It is days like this that allows kids to connect and to show their appreciation for one another. I know these are dark- we are watching a film- but they are willing to share their goods!

Nallely Briones Loredo

Kaelanne Wood, Celeste Caro, and Luz DeLos Santos

Tayler Braswell and Stefanie Thomas

Paige Perkins Parker

I love this particular class and these particular young ladies (though I love them all- these girls are just rock stars!) 

As far as the rest of the week goes: 

11th grade: Reading "The Way to Rainy Mountain" and working through meaning getting ready to use Socratic Circles for the discussion. I hope the kids will find meaning within the story :) 

10th grade: We are finishing our poetry slides. I will have to upload one or two to share. They are proving quite beautiful! 

I hope all finds a few minutes with loved ones :) Happy Valentine's Day Everyone!! 

Funny Teenagers

As my kids are working on their poetry projects and there is a quiet in the class, I decided to jump on here and write. Just a moment ago, one of my boys gets up to use the restroom, and when he is walking back, he trips on a chair causing a set of giggles in the predominately female room. He blushes (yes, he was okay) and laughs at himself. Once he is settled, they have all returned to work.

This project is far greater than I had anticipated, and I am already making changes to the requirements for next year. I know this group can manage the task at hand, so I am leaving it alone for this year and just extending the time. I even have one young lady show me how to insert moving images:

. 

This is too cool! I love learning from them!

This particular student just said to me, "either I don't know how to count, or there are only fifteen of the terms."
I said, "look on the back page."
She turned it around and jumped! A whole page of terms are waiting for her attention! Made both of us just laugh!

11th grade, and I had one boy come to me yesterday, and we had the following conversation:
"Mrs. Arney! Look! I am finally becoming a man!" and he rubs the side of his face. "I am getting facial hair and everything!"
I look up and smile and said, "I am so proud of you!"
The entire class busted up laughing!

This is how my week has gone! They are so funny! I keep thinking more will come and it does!

Currently, I have a young lady who writes beautiful poetry, and I am searching for contests to enter her work into. If we can find a few, she will get published and possibly earn a few scholarships!

We have just enjoyed the learning we have accomplished this week- the poetry project and learning to do a close reading...

That is proving to be a challenge. I have had to do more one to one teaching- which is the area I truly do accel- but it does get tiresome repeating myself over and over again. The benefit to this is I get to see far more aha moments :) Which I love, so I believe this is not so bad. Everyday, I get more and more work turned in. I guess that is something anyway. Sometimes I wonder if it is even good to set due dates....that has been the area of frustration for me. Anyway, I believe that the good this week has outweighed the bad, and if that is the worst that happens, we are in very good shape!

Moving forward...Immigration and Poetry

It has been far too long from my last post... I am slacking! I need to step up the game and write more often. I believe it helps me to see exactly where I am and where I need to go as an educator.

My classes started off weird at the beginning of January...I started with the bell work lessons. I wanted my students to write the rules and explanations for each idea that I presented. Great idea until I used all of the class period going through grammar instruction. Unfortunately, this is not all they need to know for the End of Instruction. I hate teaching to the test, but my goal is to help them realize that I am far harder than the tests they must take. Anyway, I stopped half way through the week, had the kids read for three days- many connected stronger to the books they had checked out and suddenly AR points are coming in where they have not before- and I revamped the lessons I needed to teach. I am shifting reading Mondays to reading Fridays- hopefully less kids will need to play catch up from missing the Friday work day.

On to what we are doing:

11th graders are taking a journey through history. I began the unit by asking the question "What is America?" I received a slew of answers from freedom to different races to Obama care and immigration. Then I asked them what nationality they come from. We discussed the differences between a melting pot vs. a mixed salad as it relates to immigration. I gave them a genealogy chart and had them ask questions with their parents and grandparents. Most were able to go back at least four generations. I was highly impressed! They were really into figuring out who they are and where they come from. We discussed the idea that we all have great grandparents and we will eventually have great grandchildren. I had them write two paragraphs. The first one includes the idea that their great grandparents wanted a life for them. Then I had them write about the things they wanted for their great grandchildren. I asked them what they were willing to do to get the life they wanted for their posterity. I had some really great responses.

Next, I located an article in The Oklahoman called "Sands of Time" all about the small black community of Sandtown, OKC, settled in 1884- 5 years before the land run of 1889. It hits on the idea that a black community settled and had reasons to settle. The article appeared just last Monday, connecting this to today's time. Currently, they are working on a lengthy reader-response, writing about the news article after they have annotated it. It is hitting on all the skills located in Buckle Down including summary, prediction, main idea, theme, and author's purpose. Next week we shift from the Black community to the Native community with "The Way to Rainy Mountain" by N. Scott Momaday.

I am pretty excited to get in to the literature- "Barbie-B-Que" by Sandra Cisneros, "The Girl Who Wouldn't Speak" by Amy Tan, and The Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights as the white man literature should take us to testing. I would really like to get into "The Crucible" play for the end of the year, but we shall see where this is taking us and the timing of the matter.

10th graders are moving through Rhythm and Poetry. We are looking for term examples within music and pulling together google slideshows to demonstrate the new knowledge they have gained. The biggest frustration has been the video blocking. I have to open the music for them and I think that if they are allowed to see so many other things, they should be allowed to view music... just sayin' :) The project includes era music- 1910-1919, 1920-1929, etc all the way to current time. They must use multiple genres including Rock, Blues, Jazz, Holiday, Hip Hop, Pop, Soul, etc. It really is unlimited to the types of music as long as they can pull in the different genres. Their slides must have the lyrics, a definition of the term, an explanation, the writer, the singer, the year it was produced, a video, the time for the example, etc. They must have visually appealing slides with a background in place and thought put into the presentation. Each show will be very interesting to watch and I believe that once the students get the hang of the creation process, they will be able to do this quickly and efficiently.

Once we are finished with this, we are moving directly into the writing process with descriptive writing. I am excited to get this group into the process. It should be very interesting as we work through the modes- description, narrative, expository, and finally, argumentative. I really do not want to go full force- more just glazing the surface of the modes to help them understand the language used and the layout provided for each mode of writing. Once all is completed, and we take our EOI, we will be at the end of the year, and I would really like to work in a fairy tale unit.

I cannot believe that we will be coming to the end of our school year so quickly! January has come and gone. It has been an enlightening year so far and one of personal sadness...my father-in-law passed away this week. This is two dad's for me in five months, and I have had quite enough death to last for awhile. My heart is heavy and my mind is full. I am just happy that I am not in my first year of teaching...I think it would have taken its toll on my career.

So that is the inside of my room. The kids and I are in a pretty great groove until they complain too much and I have to shut them down. For the most part, they are respectful and know the limits. I love them- even the ornery ones. It is in my soul to teach.

And we ended with a little trash!

NHS Juniors post ACT Testing pulling on the safety vests for a little area cleanup! 

 

 
 It is all about the team work!

Bags and bags of trash! A satisfied and tired crew! 

and a tired teacher! I had my own bag filled to throw away!

One of my main objectives to teaching is that I will not ask my students to do something and I not be willing to do it as well. I find that this makes the kids see me in a different light. Yes, it hurts my body to do the work, but I think the kids see that I am doing this with them and not making them do the work without getting a little dirty too. 

This idea carried into my classroom this week. I gave my sophomores some stories to read and create a poster with key elements. I had not done one in a long time for a sample. One of the stories was really a slow read, so I took that one on and created a poster to demonstrate the things that I expect my students to see. I believe this will make my students see eye to eye with me on many levels. 

The same happened with the MLA practice. I worked my worksheet on the board while the kids filled one in at their tables...I think seeing me write with them makes a huge difference in the expectations I set for them. 

I really feel like we have accomplished much this week. I taught complex materials with a large amount of success and was able to proctor the ACT where many of my students found me this morning along with an NHS activity....all in all, a good week. 

Eye-Opening Experiences

As I sat in my Differential Training this past week, my life as a teacher shifted- it shifted for the benefit of my students and myself. I am so thankful that I have had the opportunity to share and discuss with teachers from across this state the challenges- and yes, I will say it- the frustrations I have had in the classroom this year.

I think I came in with all of these great ideas and expectations for my students, and while I loved my training at Great Expectations, I think my expectations were a little too far out there at times- like I would teach it and they will get it. That should be all they wrote, right? Not and let me explain.

Suzanne Maxwell is a teacher for WIDA- the ELL standards company for our diverse student population. She is brand new to the program. We were her second group of teachers that she has had the opportunity to train. She is from North Dakota, speaks French fluently and hosts a plethora of refugee families from Africa and other parts of the world on her personal time. She has worked for years with children and families who are learning the English language for the first time, and she taught a lesson in French. I have sat in Spanish classes before and have struggled through them, but I have a small high school background on the subject, so I kind of knew the language. This was totally new to me. In the lesson, she spoke totally in French, did not use any type of help or props or actions and she yelled when we started to discuss the ideas she gave us (what little we understood if any) and told us to speak only in French. We just looked at her like "What?!" Then she changed it. She added props to the story, pictures, and gestures. She repeated herself multiple times and pointed to things as she named them and she really did all she could think to do to help us understand the language as she spoke it. It hit me like a lightening bolt: not only are my ELL kiddos not completely understanding the requirements, my regular ed kids are struggling too.

I believe this to be true when I lose them in a lesson and when they start to act up or start to talk over me. I know realistically that I cannot always reach every student, but when I realized that all students are just that- they are students, it changed the way I have thought about the profession I am in and the way I have been approaching my classes. It reaffirmed why I am in my profession and how I need to approach each new day. My students are children and they are still learning and every student is not the same. I have found that I am feeling more compassion for their learning struggles and less agitated when they do not get the ideas I am teaching right away. I came in this morning revived and regenerated with same principles and same requirements, just a new way to look at the learning of my kids.

We are still pressing on with MLA in 11th grade. I checked what they did and did not do when they came in and moved on instead of getting on to them. I believe it held them more accountable and made them realize that I am paying attention and that they need to tow the line as well.

My 10th graders need refreshment of their activities as well, and I did some clean-up for them, with the exception of the one young lady 7th hour who told me that I teach really well, but I was too boring and I needed to do a song and dance for her to stay awake- "you know you could like juggle for me or something..am I right? You could even yell and I would pay more attention to you."
This was said by a young lady who is what the other kids call "salty." I just smiled and told her I had two more items and that I will be asking her to repeat the requirements of the task. This was also the same student who told me to not expect her to produce the poster I wanted from her because I was asking for too much...hmmmm...any thoughts?

Just a few thoughts in perspective and now looking forward to the next few weeks of school.