This is my first year in the classroom as a high school teacher so I don't have a reference for last year. I would like to share some of the challenges and successes that I have experience during my past 1.5 months in the classroom. I absolutely love teaching! It is proving to be the most challenging and rewarding career that I have experienced. During the past month, I am learning to respect the advice of my mentor (Ms. Chillis) that I am working to hard. My students are eager to participate in the activities associated with classroom management and the standards based classroom. I have delegated task to the students that have proven to be both motivating for them and tension releasing for me. My students have eagerly taken on the task of completing the word wall with word collages that challenge their capacity to think outside the box and analyze the meaning of the words when finding images to create the word meaning.
I am so thankful that I attended NTI this summer and I have seen success with the many strategies that were introduced to control the climate of the classroom. The "To do--To know" structure of the objective has been extremely useful as well because the students simply want to know "what am I suppose to do". I keep my notebook handy and I plan to continue to incorporate the strategies that I am learning along away.
Suzette,
ReplyDeleteI am so glad to hear things are going well over all. I am glad that your students are enjoying the responsibilities that you have given them. My students are not responding so well so if you have any suggestions on your approach, I will gladly take them. It is so helpful if you can get them to do some things. I am intrigued by the word wall with word collages. I have been wanting to do something with the main words we use but am not sure how to get it started. Once again, I will taken any ideas. I hate that you are working so much but as I was told and it is definitely true, all first year teachers must go through it. The great thing for me is that I am seeing slowly but surely improvements. I think I thought everything would be solved by this year but I still see GREAT 10 year teachers having a tough time with everything.
I am so glad that you are doing well and I look forward to hearing more from you.
Ginger,
ReplyDeleteThe word wall has worked well. I must admit I had 5 students today that flat out said--I'm not doing it. They all volunteered to be removed from my class (see my blog post this week) and that was a relief. I am listening to a lot of seasoned teachers for ideas to keep them engaged. One teacher recommended open notebook test to make sure they are engaged during the mini lecture. I think it sent a good message to the class that I used it on. My next lecture was "all eyes on me" .
I still don't have a lab and that is extremely exhausting because there is only so much we can do without lab activity. I sent out an "SOS" to my fellow HSTE instructors in my county and they are all chiming in to give support.
Well, good luck to you. We will see what each week brings. I like this format!