Ready, Set, Teach!

Give it up for P4!

Well, yet again I have managed to let the days slip past me without posting to my blog. I think now is a good time to talk about my lessons. I have taught almost 20 lessons now. Wow, that is unbelievable to me now that I write it! Time is absolutely just flying by. Anyway, my lessons have been going fairly well. I am feeling comfortable with them and am getting good feedback.

As previously mentioned, in Mathematics we just finished studying sets. I taught most of the unit and gave a test to assess their understanding of the content. The students did fairly well, but many of the scores needed improvement. Naturally, I am finding that the students who are less fluent in English struggle more when it comes to assessments and practices. I am still getting used to the fact that when I speak, a good portion of the words and phrases I use are misunderstood by a majority of the class. I am working on slowing up a bit, and being conscious of the language I use with my students. Also, working individually with students (which is nearly impossible to do with each student that needs one on one time) and using manipulatives are helping tremendously.

Manipulatives are proving especially helpful right now. We have begun studying place value, so I feel that visual and hand on aids will give them a deeper understanding of the concept. So far I have used base ten blocks and number tents to teach. Though it is helping, I am wondering if I should have lectured on the topic before allowing them to explore with the blocks. Normally I would support their prior exploration, but with the language barrier they might have benefited from being shown, and then exploring. Regardless, I think it is something they are enjoying and I believe they will ultimately benefit from learning in such a way.

Something funny related to base ten blocks actually happened the other day. I knew I would be starting the unit on place value so I went to the resource closet in the office to see if they had the blocks. There were only a few sets of 100, and King James said he thought they must have all been misplaced. So that night, I spent way more time than I thought it would take to make my own sets of base ten blocks using notebook paper and markers. After much marking and cutting, I got to sleep and woke the next morning excited to put my hard work to use. After passing out the paper “blocks” in class and getting through the first example, Merince, one of the teachers who sometimes sits in while I teach math, brought in a giant bag of base ten blocks. So, though I ended up wasting my time the previous evening, I was not frustrated. Had she not seen me using my homemade blocks, she may have never located the bag. I know Jess wants to use them for teaching place value too, so I am glad that we now know their location.

Sorting Sentences. This proved to be a beneficial activity.

In English our unit is about describing people and places. Basically, we have been exploring different adjectives and working on using them in sentences when they are in their positive, comparative, and superlative forms. We have also looked at opposites and are reading short descriptive stories. I have been trying to do group activities and visually stimulating lessons to avoid lecturing in class. Because some struggle with not only speaking, but with reading and writing too, I feel like we have really been hammering some of these concepts into one another. But today in class I definitely saw a huge difference in their responsiveness to questions than I did three days ago. I was basically yelling while congratulating them in class because I was so excited that they had shown improvement from Monday. I was going to give an assessment on Friday, but I think I might wait until Monday. I don’t want to rush into the new unit at the expense of a deeper understanding of the content they are just starting to really understand.

Jetridah (wall-side) looks to be deep in thought. Mission accomplished!

So that is where I am at right now with everything. Planning has been taking up a ton of my time. I am not yet very efficient when it comes to the task. I am still too concerned with having lessons completely mapped out (good thing/bad thing). I am getting better with this though. It is helping to write up more of a general outline with a few solid examples of whatever it is we are covering. From there, it is working to let the flow of the class dictate where the lesson goes. I am learning to be more flexible, yet I still stick to my lesson objectives.

Standing Just South of the Equator in Igna!

Last point of interest: today was my very first and last “planking” experience…on the equator! Totally immature, I know. But to tell you the truth, it felt pretty sweet. More to come soon (blogging not planking)!

Really? C'mon.