Personal Victories

Sorry it has been so long...it has been a crazy couple of weeks!

You should know, I survived my first day and first week (2 days, really.) of school! I'm not almost halfway through the first full week!

Here are a couple of things that I've realized so far...
...If you say, one more thing...please, just make it one more thing. I completely understand that certain information triggers new concepts that need to be addressed, but get to a stopping point to let students process for a quick second.
..."Can I have your attention please..." - This is just fun to say in an Eminem voice. The kids really seem to enjoy it. Don't misunderstand me here...I normally have their attention, they just might be conversing with other students and I need them to pause so that I can address certain topics, then I quickly send them back to discovering.
...When you think you have technology under control the first day of school, you don't. The kids are just being good because it is the first day. In my building, we have an open technology policy. This means that the students can have technology as long as the teacher specifies when it is okay. The expectation that I set was that if I'm talking, I don't want to see your headphones. You may have your phone on your desk, as long as it is on silent (no vibrate) and it is not distracting you from what I am doing, or what the people in your group are doing. I've made this more clear by saying, if you feel the need to have it on your desk, put it face down. When it is work time, you may take care of business on your phone if it is an emergency. If you are working on your own, you may have headphones. I don't want to hear your music, the people around you shouldn't either. If I hear music, headphones will become mine for the remainder of the hour.
...I have mixed feelings about this next one, but I will explain...Always create a seating chart for the first day. I really like letting the kids come in and choose where they would like to sit. This allows me to see who wants to sit in the front of the room, who sits on the side, who sits by themselves. (In my room, originally all of the desks were in groups of threes or fours...they are now in twos and threes.) This is all fairly important for me to find out in the first couple of days. BUT, I have been dealing with side conversations consistently. I rearranged the chairs today (because I got a 29th student in a class and needed another chair in the mix...) and the kids FREAKED out when they walked in the room. I had to make it very clear that they needed to pick a new seat, and that they couldn't move the chairs. It was a little rough, we will see how it goes tomorrow! Creating a seating chart would have definitely set the tone more effectively, but there is so much I wouldn't know about the personalities of my students.
...I couldn't have asked for a better first day activity! Thankfully, I found this Who I Am activity for my students to do! After I went over the syllabus, classroom procedures and classroom expectations, the students were given the rest of the hour to fill in the sheet. The "My Family" box came with a lot of questions...they weren't sure what to write. I told them to write down anything that they were comfortable with me knowing...who they lived with, how many siblings they have, any other important people in their family. There are a good number of students that have moved quite a bit, and I was able to see what places they have lived in the past. With about 5 minutes left in class, I went through my responses. These were things I like today, my favorites in high school...pretty much what ever I thought they could know about me.
...Learn the names of your students, ASAP. I did! I had everyone's name before they left my room the first day of school. I was able to take attendance (with no "seating chart") on the second day! Don't get me wrong, I used the process of elimination some, but I knew everyone's name when they came in my room Monday without a list in front of me. The activity we did on the first day really helped me with this. I was walking around the room making connections with what the students had written on their papers and most importantly, THEIR NAMES. I could find out their name without having to ask...they were impressed that I knew their names and I only ever asked for it once!

So now for the title...personal victories...there were multiple times today that I was reassured I am supposed to be a teacher...more importantly and information presenter and a person to help organize and connect thoughts and ideas...I couldn't be more thankful!

In my Algebra 1 class, we were talking about classifying numbers (rational and irrational), ordering numbers from least to greatest, and graphing them on a number line. [I have given my students guided notes so far...thanks to a great template from my student teaching! It save SO much time on students not having to write EVERY word down on their paper. I write all of the little details and information for examples and they have room to write definitions or space to work.] We had gotten through all of the 'boring' stuff, like definitions and were on to ordering numbers. When we flipped the page, where all of the examples were, I said, "You need to do the first example...play around with the numbers. Figure out how we can order the numbers from least to greatest." The first example had decimals and mixed numbers. (This wasn't easy for some students, but I wanted to know what they knew!) When I turned them loose, I got to see exactly who knew what they were doing, who was asking people around them for help, who immediately raised their hands, and who was just trying to figure out how to put a fraction in the calculator. THIS WAS GREAT! I was able to help the students that raised their hands...but I made sure to only ask them questions...I never actually answered their question directly...I just asked more questions! As one of the groups was working, they had all of the numbers converted to decimals, they were trying to put them in order...I heard a student say..."but if we have $5 and fifty cents, that's more than $5 and five cents." ...they were comparing 5.5 and 5.05. The student they were explaining to thought that 5.05 was bigger because it had more digits. I could literally see the light bulb click for this student, and I know I had the biggest smile on my face.

Now for more smiles...I've never seen as many blank stares from students as I did yesterday in my Geometry classes. We were talking about points, lines, and planes and their relationships. I only got finished with the notes in one of the three classes. Thankfully, today was Topic Tuesday for bellwork. I put up a "diagram" of a plane, with points on it and a line going through it. The task for bellwork was to come up with as many relationships as possible using the words: points, lines, planes, co-linear, co-planar. Some students jumped right in, some were VERY hesitant. When it was time to "go-over" the bellwork, I started with the last word, coplanar. There were the most possible connections to be made about the points on the plane being coplanar, so it was an easy starting place. I was able to show how the line goes through the plane, and the point where the line meets the plane...really is a location on both the line and the plane. We talked about which points were colinear and the different ways to write the name of a line and a plane, using capital letters, italicized letters, and lowercase letters. Everyone had a different understanding at this point. With "Fist of Five" I had the students show me where they were...0 being that this was a foreign language, and a 5 that they could teach someone so that they were at a 5 as well. I LOVE THIS method. I probably asked each class 5 times so that I could see how well we were progressing...AND WE WERE! So the "bellwork" took about 15 minutes, which was fine, because the day was set to still talk about points, lines, and planes.

I then gave every class the option to finish the notes sheet from yesterday, fill out a new graphic organizer, or do an activity trying to match pictures with statements. I didn't call the graphing organizer a "foldable" because they aren't familiar with this terminology and I knew we didn't have a whole lot of time to cut them out.
Instead I used the margins for additional information like how to name lines and planes! My first two classes chose the graphic organizer. As I was passing it out, I said, "If you are the type of person that will do better with colors...get them now!" So many students either got out pens, or went and got colored pencils or markers from the back of the room. I have a TV in my room and have found an amazing iPad App, Splashtop, that I can control what is on my "external monitor" (TV/Computer), from my iPad while I am at the whiteboard rather than having to walk back to my desk. So I pulled up the page from the blog with the example, and showed the students what information we were putting on the graphic organizer. While we were filling it out, we named all of the lines with points and lower case letters. We also practiced naming the planes with points and italicized letters. We had GREAT conversations about each of the boxes and I made sure that I heard from each student in each class. By the time the bell rang, every student was holding up a 4!
The last class was more into using the diagrams and answering questions about the diagrams...which was great as well. They chose to do a worksheet that they had to choose which lines, line segments, and rays met certain criteria. (I can't find it's original location...when I do, I will link it!) Once they thought they were done, they wanted to know if they were correct. I made them find someone else that was done and they had to compare answers and decide who was correct.
When they were done with this, we still had about 7 minutes of class, so I drew a new diagram on the board, using different colors, there were 2 planes, with points on them and a line going through them. I asked each student true or false questions, while trying to be tricky, about the diagram.
...So I missed the big part of this...one of the students completely gave up while we were doing bellwork and did the whole, "I don't get it..." story. They were then on their phone and I asked them to put it away, told them I was confident they won't understand if they don't pay attention...everyone else in the room was actively engaged. They put the phone away, and all the sudden said, "Can I just take two minutes to ask questions so I can get this figured out?!" I said "YES! Let's take a minute to help (Student's Name) get this!" As soon as they said a statement, I would ask another student if the statement made was correct. I could see the confidence from everyone going up!

This has been way too long of a post, but it was needed! I hope you have enjoyed it my (not so) late night ramblings.

Shelby