Post by elementary on Aug 28, 2012 23:55:40 GMT -5
Dear Diary,
Schedules have now been set and we're settling into the long ride for the year.
My schedule is no surprise and follows the pattern established during my prior 8 years of teaching.
We start the day with two hours of language arts (spelling, vocab, grammar, reading, writing) followed by a short period when we divide up the students by ability to target specific skills.
Recess follows during which I usually stay in my room with students who failed to do their homework the night before. Yes, it's a hindrance, but my other option is to have the students sit on the picnic benches on the playground, but out there supervision is poor at best. The yard monitors have bigger fish to fry than making sure a handful of kids are sitting quietly isolated. Eventually friends of the seated gravitate over and then cluster around those who should be sitting quietly finishing whatever homework they failed to complete the night before (or reading if their punishment was based on negative behavior.) I used to be able to send my students to the cafeteria during our recess, but a change of lunch schedules put our 6th grade recess against the lunch period of the lower grades, so that option became null and void.
So I sit with my little entourage and make sure they look properly chastised....
Today I had quite a few sitting with me at recess, and it really perturbed me, as the vast majority of them failed to do my multiplication homework I assigned, which is excessively easy. I must have had 10 or 11 sitting there at recess writing up their times tables for the number 4. If it had only been 3 or 4, then I wouldn't have been so irritated, but to have 33% of my class fail to put out the effort on this assignment on the very first day I assign it was extremely disappointing. If I keeps up, I'll use the term disheartening, but right now it's too early to say that.
I guess I should explain this method I developed to get kids to memorize their multiplication.
It's basic.
It originated 6 years ago or so during a meeting of teachers. Oh my God, if you ever want to hear a group of people who argue over the littlest things, come to a teacher meeting. It drives me crazy.
I had 8 years in a business office as an account manager at a telecommunications company. We laid cable across the USA and resold the capacity to local phone companies who needed to provide long distance to their customers. I had a pager 24x7 and dealt with all sorts of business people. At the busiest, I had a million dollars worth of product crossing my desk a month. It paid well, and at my peak, before my company went bankrupt, my salary was higher than it is presently 8 years into teaching.
Anyways, there are quite a few teachers who have only taught, and I applaud them as wonderful people mostly, but some of what they argue over is so trivial at times - especially dealing with work amounts, I inwardly cringe and wonder if they know what its like working a job with two weeks off a year, business trips, an everpresent cell phone, cubicles, and a boss two doors down watching over his/her office like a lion monitoring its pride.
Teaching, in comparison (depending on your principal) runs much differently.
So I was sitting there, staring at the ever present bowl of candy that comes out for our weekly teacher meeting, when one of the 6 grade teachers (I was teaching 4th at the time) started complaining about how none of her students knew their multiplication tables. A 5th grade teacher picked up on her tone and claimed that was the job of the 4th grade, and someone in that group (not me) pointed down at the 3rd grade table and said that standard was a 3rd grade one.
Then several others started piping up that the district doesn't give out much in the way of support and that they didn't have time to teach something that should have been done before their grade.
I believe I turned a little red.
I asked why they didn't come up with anything themselves instead of relying on relief that never was coming. I heard excuses and mumbling.
(Please understand things got a lot better with a new principal we received the following year - and who is now the assistant superintendent of curriculum, so the atmosphere at my school is much changed now from this low point.)
So I went back to my room and thought about the problem. I couldn't take up much time in my class teaching multiplication, and I couldn't use up much in the way of physical resources. The budget wouldn't allow it.
After a couple days I had it, and I began its implementation immediately and have had wonderful success with it for years now.
You start by giving a 10x10 multiplication grid - the randomized 1 through 10 listed across the top and down its side. You then give students 5 minutes to finish this grid. If you fail to finish or get even 1 wrong on the page, you are assigned homework. The homework is simple and must be done Monday through Thursday. The student begins by working on the times table for the number four with the numbers 1 through 10. (4x1=4; 4 x 2 = 8; through 4 x 10=40.) This list is written five times but the order MUST be changed each time. On Friday the quiz is given again, and again, if incomplete or bearing 1 wrong answer, the student is assigned homework (times tables) for the following week, except now they will be doing it for the number 6 and not 4. Test again on Friday and if still not passing, the number 7 is assigned. then 8 and finally 9. The times tables for 1, 2, 3, 5, and 10 are too easy to memorize to waste time with them.
As stated a few days ago - with this program - I go from less than 5 passing on the first test to over 20 passing within six weeks.
It works, but the politics of teaching have kept it from being used in at least one other school. I had a teacher hear about it and when she went to her principal was told she couldn't it use it because it wasn't the adopted curriculum!
No Child Left Behind has pushed scores up across the county in many places, but in its wake is a loss of self-reliance and out of the box thinking that leads to some crazy decisions.
But I was talking about my schedule.
After recess, we work through math until lunch. Lunch the kids go out of the room and I shut my door to keep out the random clusters of girls who come back and ask if they can help with anything. I recently bought an Open/Closed sign normally seen on storefronts to place in my window while I relax in my room.
After lunch comes my Events of the Day followed by science or social studies. We do this for around 45 minutes. I'll be losing some of this time soon when we add a half hour of English Language Development for students who have English as a second language. (How the students are divided is ludicrous but I don't have the heart to get into this right now.) Finally, to top off the day, we have PE a couple times a week. Currently I'm trying to build up the students' stamina so they can run the mile in middle school. Today I outran 6 of my students, which is horrible, as I am an overweight, underexercised, 45 year old male. They should run circles around me.
"What happens if you pass me?" Asked one of my students during the run.
"I get bragging rights," I replied.
The boy's eyes got real big and he hustled forward yelling, "Don't let Mr. Foster pass you!"
Ah, I love motivation through humiliation.
The last thing that happened today, and which occurs now on each Tuesday, is our teacher's meeting. Today we discussed a great many things, but you really are probably nodding off. Maybe I'll talk about them tomorrow.
And I wonder how many students will be sitting tomorrow?
L
Schedules have now been set and we're settling into the long ride for the year.
My schedule is no surprise and follows the pattern established during my prior 8 years of teaching.
We start the day with two hours of language arts (spelling, vocab, grammar, reading, writing) followed by a short period when we divide up the students by ability to target specific skills.
Recess follows during which I usually stay in my room with students who failed to do their homework the night before. Yes, it's a hindrance, but my other option is to have the students sit on the picnic benches on the playground, but out there supervision is poor at best. The yard monitors have bigger fish to fry than making sure a handful of kids are sitting quietly isolated. Eventually friends of the seated gravitate over and then cluster around those who should be sitting quietly finishing whatever homework they failed to complete the night before (or reading if their punishment was based on negative behavior.) I used to be able to send my students to the cafeteria during our recess, but a change of lunch schedules put our 6th grade recess against the lunch period of the lower grades, so that option became null and void.
So I sit with my little entourage and make sure they look properly chastised....
Today I had quite a few sitting with me at recess, and it really perturbed me, as the vast majority of them failed to do my multiplication homework I assigned, which is excessively easy. I must have had 10 or 11 sitting there at recess writing up their times tables for the number 4. If it had only been 3 or 4, then I wouldn't have been so irritated, but to have 33% of my class fail to put out the effort on this assignment on the very first day I assign it was extremely disappointing. If I keeps up, I'll use the term disheartening, but right now it's too early to say that.
I guess I should explain this method I developed to get kids to memorize their multiplication.
It's basic.
It originated 6 years ago or so during a meeting of teachers. Oh my God, if you ever want to hear a group of people who argue over the littlest things, come to a teacher meeting. It drives me crazy.
I had 8 years in a business office as an account manager at a telecommunications company. We laid cable across the USA and resold the capacity to local phone companies who needed to provide long distance to their customers. I had a pager 24x7 and dealt with all sorts of business people. At the busiest, I had a million dollars worth of product crossing my desk a month. It paid well, and at my peak, before my company went bankrupt, my salary was higher than it is presently 8 years into teaching.
Anyways, there are quite a few teachers who have only taught, and I applaud them as wonderful people mostly, but some of what they argue over is so trivial at times - especially dealing with work amounts, I inwardly cringe and wonder if they know what its like working a job with two weeks off a year, business trips, an everpresent cell phone, cubicles, and a boss two doors down watching over his/her office like a lion monitoring its pride.
Teaching, in comparison (depending on your principal) runs much differently.
So I was sitting there, staring at the ever present bowl of candy that comes out for our weekly teacher meeting, when one of the 6 grade teachers (I was teaching 4th at the time) started complaining about how none of her students knew their multiplication tables. A 5th grade teacher picked up on her tone and claimed that was the job of the 4th grade, and someone in that group (not me) pointed down at the 3rd grade table and said that standard was a 3rd grade one.
Then several others started piping up that the district doesn't give out much in the way of support and that they didn't have time to teach something that should have been done before their grade.
I believe I turned a little red.
I asked why they didn't come up with anything themselves instead of relying on relief that never was coming. I heard excuses and mumbling.
(Please understand things got a lot better with a new principal we received the following year - and who is now the assistant superintendent of curriculum, so the atmosphere at my school is much changed now from this low point.)
So I went back to my room and thought about the problem. I couldn't take up much time in my class teaching multiplication, and I couldn't use up much in the way of physical resources. The budget wouldn't allow it.
After a couple days I had it, and I began its implementation immediately and have had wonderful success with it for years now.
You start by giving a 10x10 multiplication grid - the randomized 1 through 10 listed across the top and down its side. You then give students 5 minutes to finish this grid. If you fail to finish or get even 1 wrong on the page, you are assigned homework. The homework is simple and must be done Monday through Thursday. The student begins by working on the times table for the number four with the numbers 1 through 10. (4x1=4; 4 x 2 = 8; through 4 x 10=40.) This list is written five times but the order MUST be changed each time. On Friday the quiz is given again, and again, if incomplete or bearing 1 wrong answer, the student is assigned homework (times tables) for the following week, except now they will be doing it for the number 6 and not 4. Test again on Friday and if still not passing, the number 7 is assigned. then 8 and finally 9. The times tables for 1, 2, 3, 5, and 10 are too easy to memorize to waste time with them.
As stated a few days ago - with this program - I go from less than 5 passing on the first test to over 20 passing within six weeks.
It works, but the politics of teaching have kept it from being used in at least one other school. I had a teacher hear about it and when she went to her principal was told she couldn't it use it because it wasn't the adopted curriculum!
No Child Left Behind has pushed scores up across the county in many places, but in its wake is a loss of self-reliance and out of the box thinking that leads to some crazy decisions.
But I was talking about my schedule.
After recess, we work through math until lunch. Lunch the kids go out of the room and I shut my door to keep out the random clusters of girls who come back and ask if they can help with anything. I recently bought an Open/Closed sign normally seen on storefronts to place in my window while I relax in my room.
After lunch comes my Events of the Day followed by science or social studies. We do this for around 45 minutes. I'll be losing some of this time soon when we add a half hour of English Language Development for students who have English as a second language. (How the students are divided is ludicrous but I don't have the heart to get into this right now.) Finally, to top off the day, we have PE a couple times a week. Currently I'm trying to build up the students' stamina so they can run the mile in middle school. Today I outran 6 of my students, which is horrible, as I am an overweight, underexercised, 45 year old male. They should run circles around me.
"What happens if you pass me?" Asked one of my students during the run.
"I get bragging rights," I replied.
The boy's eyes got real big and he hustled forward yelling, "Don't let Mr. Foster pass you!"
Ah, I love motivation through humiliation.
The last thing that happened today, and which occurs now on each Tuesday, is our teacher's meeting. Today we discussed a great many things, but you really are probably nodding off. Maybe I'll talk about them tomorrow.
And I wonder how many students will be sitting tomorrow?
L