A certain light was beginning to
dawn dimlywithin her.

Student or Student Teacher

The last couple of weeks has been very overwhelming for me to try balancing teaching students and being a student myself. At times I find myself thanking God that I don't have a job to balance in as well.
As a student I have had papers due, midterms to take, and nightly homework that I have struggled to fit in. As a teacher I have had papers to grade, 9 weeks tests to prepare students for and grade, and lesson plans to prepare and teach.
I have realized that at this time, all I can do is count down the days until graduation, and practice my poker face so my students don't know how frazzled I am.

To teach or to intern?

We had some interesting discussion in class today...and I want to reiterate one point. Bear the burdin of teaching and all that comes with it, including student confidences, homework assignments (or lack of!), student apathy...bear it only to the point that a school representative needs to become involved, even if that invovlement is just listening to you talk about the concern.

While at times such responsibility makes one feel needed, important, yes, responsible, this responsibility does ulitimately lie with the classroom teacher; thus, the teacher needs to know of issues with which you might be dealing.

Both of you will be wonderful teachers. How do I know this? You care. You want to do more, more for your students, more for your schools.

Thanks for caring!

Back on Track

Time to refocus! Please continue using graphic organizers in your class and plan a way to utilize a cooperative learning group (this the topic of this week's reading assignment).

May we also discuss using a poem within a lesson? Did the students like the poem? Why or why not? Were/are you comfortable teaching poetry?

I hope that as you take time to reflect on your first nine weeks of teaching that you discover many moments, for you are both doing an excellent job!

Have a great week!

Trash Ball

Grammar lessons in seventh grade were never fun. I have noticed that the students get very bored when we are talking about comma rules, capitalization, or sentence structures. I decided to play a game in the middle of one of my lessons a few weeks ago. One of my good friends told me she used it while she was a student intern. I have found that trash ball is an excellent way for students to learn grammar rules and have fun at the same time.

This game keeps their attention and also puts a competitive spin on learning. I usually will offer a couple of bonus points to the winning team when we play this game. This drives them to want to win even more.

The Rules:

1. Divide the kids into teams. I usually will number them off, and I generally only have two teams.

2. Let them make their own trash ball! They love this idea...they get to crunch up a bunch of papers or anything they have in their backpack to create either a small trash ball or a huge trash ball. I noticed some of the boys were even competing to make the best trash ball!

3. Once you have decided who goes first, kids must shoot their trash ball into a trash can to answer a question. If they miss, they forfeit their turn to the opposing team. If they make the shot, they get to come to the board and correct a sentence. If they completely answer the question and/or correct the sentence then they recieve a point.

4. With this game I mix up if I am going to let this be group oriented or if I want only individuals answering questions. The kids like to play it either way.

I have already used this game several times in class. The kids now beg to play everyday we have a grammar lesson! I usally will let them play the last ten or fifteen minutes of class if we make it through all of the lesson. When I first tried this game I didn't realize how much the kids would love it. I am very glad to have found something that makes them WANT to LEARN grammar!

Time to "fall"

Just a reminder...no class this week in honor of Fall Break!

I hope you are having great success utilizing a graphic organizer (or two) within your classes.

Enjoy!