Grammar's gotta go

How much grammar is too much grammar? We are approaching the end of the grammar unit in 9th grade, but I still know there are some students who have NO CLUE what subject-verb agreement is. I tried so hard this semester to teach grammar differently than any other year, and I still didn't completely accomplish what I wanted. I am afraid I have left some students so far behind, but I literally did not know what else to do to reteach or reinforce the concepts I had already taught and many students already understood. If nothing else, students are getting more experience writing than they have any other year. That should come in handy for the state writing test this year.

However, I still have the question - how much is too much? Or how fast is too fast? Is there a limit to the amount of grammar information that can fit inside one student's head? I think there must be, but that limit is different for each student. I just hope that when I look over their survey responses at the end of the unit, their responses are a little more positive than at the beginning of the unit. I can't wait for these next two weeks to be over - I just want to start teaching literature. Literature is why I love being an English teacher. I think it will really revive me. I will also be able to have full-class lessons again, instead of giving students times to write and edit their papers.

Here's to a better Tuesday - typical Mondays are brutal.

All over the place

When will organizing become easier for me? I am doing a much better job at being organized this year, but it takes so darn long! I think about the future when I might have kids and a family and a house to keep clean - how will I ever have time for them when I am spending so much time trying be organized with my school work. I suppose it gets easier over time, but we'll see.

I read an article today in NEA Today magazine all about social media in the classroom. It had a great idea for teaching Romeo and Juliet. Unfortunately, it uses a Ning which currently doesn't work right at school. It just frustrates me that the really great ideas I have simply fall to the wayside because I don't have access to the technology they require.

On the plus side, I have been noticing that I spend far less time lesson planning this year. It's like the organization and years of tweaking lessons is starting to make a difference. I would definitely say I am less stressed than in years past.

This is kind of a random post, but I have noticed that that is where my head is lately. I am having a hard time focusing on one thing at a time. I think it might be because I am so overtired. I think I just need a weekend off to feel really caught up and focused. Things are getting done - just not as well as they could be because I have so many other thoughts going on in my head. We'll see what this fall weather brings. I love the fall so I hope it calms me down and sets me into a good routine.

It worked!

Today was an exciting day at school. To begin with, we had an enthusiastic "game show" for the homecoming king and queen candidates. It is always fun when the whole school can come together for the sake of school spirit. However, the best part was that I got to use one of the strategies I learned during my Effective Instructional Strategies class this summer. The strategy was called concept attainment and I used it to teach my 9th graders sentence fragments. By the end of the lesson, my students knew all of the characteristics of complete sentences. I was even to walk my struggling students through the process with a little more guidance. What really made me happy was that I didn't feel like I was being boring. Usually I can't stand listening to myself when I am introducing a new grammar topic - but today wasn't anything like that! The students were involved with the lesson and figuring things out without me just telling it to them. Yay for today! It was a good day to end a week that started with a discipline referral. Hopefully I can keep the excitement going next week.

Honeymoon is over

I guess the honeymoon is over. I wrote my first discipline referral today in school. Unfortunately, it wasn't for anything "cool," just some overused inappropriate language. I always seem to struggle with discipline referrals. I hear about kids getting kicked out of class by other teachers, but it just doesn't occur to me. Why would I want to send a kid out of my room so I have to spend more time telling them what they missed in class! I would rather just inform them that they will be receiving a discipline referral and then continue with class.

When it comes to classroom management, I often wish that I had a few days to go to other teachers' classrooms. I would love to see what their classroom management skills are. Today's discipline referral wasn't an issue of classroom management, just a 9th grader who felt like he need to swear. However, I sometimes if an issue with a student is due to the student making bad choices, or my lack of classroom management skills. I would like to think it is the former, but how do I know when I don't have other classrooms to compare to?

I hope that the rest of the year continues to run smoothly. I think I reached the maximum amount of time that my small 9th grade class can remain responsible for their own work time, so that is good to know. The more I get to know my students, the better my lessons plans for them will be - hopefully!

I am sitting here on Sunday afternoon planning my lesson for 9th grade English tomorrow. I HAD the perfect plan before, but now I cannot use it. The class I took on web 2.0 social media gave me this great idea to use glogster.com in my classes. I was even more excited when they introduced Glogster Edu for teachers and students. This version wasn't even blocked on our school computers. However, because our computers are slow or have superhero blocking programs, none of the text will load on the glogs. Everything else works except for the text. I can't have my students make glogs about the parts of speech if they can't type anything on them!

Therefore I am now working on Plan B - and I can almost guarantee that it won't get nearly as good of a reaction as glogster would have. I thought I have found a great motivating lesson and now I'm worried my grammar unit will be much like those I have taught before - boring, anti-motivational, and unauthentic.

Hopefully I will be able to get something figured out to make glogster work before we start our mythology unit when I was planning on using it again.

I can't believe I am done with my first week of my fourth year of teaching. I must say this has been the smoothest and most relaxing first week I have ever had. I was a little bit nervous with the schedule change and I am teaching a different mixture of classes than I have in the past. However, none of these things caused any real problems. Instead, my students were surprisingly attentive and courteous.

One of the things that I hope will make this year so great will be implementing all the different lessons and strategies I learned over the summer. Between my instructional strategies class, my web 2.0 class, and preparing my action research project, I feel like I have plethora of fun ideas to keep me going all year long.

My only concern now, however, is whether or not the excitement of the first week will last. I hope to do all I can to keep it going. As my friend Emily recently quoted on her blog, "Teaching isn't a job; it's my life." That is precisely how I feel. Now that I know other people feel the same way, I don't feel so bad spending so much time preparing for school. I am happy to spend the time doing what I love - and most days it doesn't feel like a real job.

Cheers to Week 1; all the best for Week 2!

I can't believe my vacation week is over. I had the most wonderful time staying at Emily's this week and it is going to be very hard not see her every day now. Britt and Andy's wedding was amazing. As my dad said, there were a lot of "dos." The church was beautiful, the bride was beautiful, and the day was a little bit warm - but beautiful! I thought it was amazing that we got to see Monets and Renoirs at the rehearsal dinner - pretty high class for Winona!

Now I actually have to finish my homework for class this weekend. I still have a lot to do, but there are so many other things that keep distracting me. I want to go through my classroom and clean it up a bit. I want to work on my classroom library. I want to decorate!! I hope I can get it all done and still have time to do the things I want to do.

I am continuing to look at a lot of the social media tools we learned about during class. I hope I still have time to explore them all even after the busy school year starts. I think having my implementation plan in place will help me make sure I am using the things I learned. The English Companion continues to be my favorite site to visit every day. How exciting to find a place where other English teachers are always trying to improve their practice just like me. There are some pictures of some really cool classrooms on there, which just makes me want to decorate even more.

I just have to keep telling myself that there are still a couple of weeks left before I actually have to be ready and after this weekend, I should have more time to work on what I really want to.

Go, Go, Web 2.0!!

I'm finding this social media class very interesting. I was hoping that it would provide tons of information and resources on how to implement more technology and social networking into my classes and it is doing just that. My only concern now is that I won't have enough time to fully explore all of the exciting things I am learning before the busy school year begins.

The thing I am worried about the most with my implementation of Web 2.0 tools is that I am sure most of the sites are blocked at school. It often takes a while for our tech coordinator to review the websites to make sure they are appropriate so I will really need to plan ahead before using any of them in my classroom.

I think it will be excellent to have a social networking site for my classes. I can post helpful links and my students can comment on it. Also, I think students could use it to ask each other questions about their homework.

Finally, using social media will fit in PERFECTLY with my action research project for the M.Ed program which is on authentic learning. How much more authentic can you get than having students use tools they already enjoy outside of school and will continue to use long after graduation.

I'm sure Emily and I will have a great time reading our articles tonight!

#1

My first post. And that is all I have to say for now!