6 posts tagged “strategies”
It sort of started as a spur of the moment little thing. And now I'm pretty much addicted ... don't know how I'd get through a week without it.
Nope, I'm not talking about huffing Sharpies. I'm talking about letting my students teach.
I teach six class periods a day. I tend to do the guided practice grammar worksheets as overheads on the whiteboard. One day, when I was just plumb sick of hearing my own voice during seventh period I announced half-way through that I was tired of it and held up my dry-erase marker, asking for a volunteer.
Well, Katie bar the door! I thought I had invited disaster to do this without any advance planning. But here comes Karebya, who does a spot-on imitation of my teaching style, right down to handing out tickets (her own!) to other students. She makes her way down the worksheet, circling the participles and drawing those great dynamic arrows to the nouns they're modifying, all while calling on other students, even calling them by last name, just as I would.
Meanwhile, I sit on top of a desk at the side of the room -- not standing, but still taller than seated students -- asking leading questions to make sure the right information was delivered, still sort of assuming the role of a student. "Miss Jones, why isn't corndog being modified by slipping through my fingers?"
Bingo. She asked another student to answer that!
It was such a success! Eventually, I got to the point where I was able to do it with all of my classes. It was crucial to choose just the right day, with the right vibe going, to introduce the process, and it still seems to work better as an impromptu moment. I still play it by ear each time as there's just no predicting which day any given class will be able to handle it. Sometimes I ask for volunteers, and sometime I ask a specific student to take over for me.
One of the good outcomes has been that when I do a mini-review as a bellringer later I can say, "Now, remember, when Mr. Kelly did such a great job teaching you this?" and everyone feels good.
It's also served to defuse a few chronic classroom management issues. When a student is teaching and others are talking, or giving her a hard time about a mistake on the board, I can make a joke about it by saying something like, "It's a tough crowd, isn't it Miss Jackson?" When I first started letting them teach, I would interrupt and ask for tissues, or complain about the room temperature. Once was enough: They got the point, and it seems to have helped take a bit of the edge off their resistance to some of my classroom rules they don't understand.
I've done a few lessons in which student-teaching was incorporated into the plan. The last part of our poetry unit, for example, was to have small groups of students each teach a poem to the rest of the class. I supplied the groups with a printed poem, and they completed an explication worksheet that prepared them to annotate their poem at the board using an overhead. Of course, I had modeled that process several times by annotating poems all along, so they knew what I expected.
Whenever my students teach I remind them to check to make sure their students understand -- not just stand there and lecture. I have to listen carefully and manage my input so each class still gets the same lesson. And it's a classroom management minefield. But haven't I always loved working on just that edge, flirting with disaster?
But mostly I really enjoy the moment when I say, "I'm as tired of hearing my voice as you are. Who wants to teach?"
I think I might have solved, partially, one of the issues with handouts, absences, missed work, and so forth.
A bit of background: I really had no idea, based on the summer school experience, how much the chronic absences (my weekly average absentee rate is 25 - 30 percent) and my students' utter inability to organize themselves and keep track of work would disrupt my ability to teach. I know this sort of thing is a perennial issue for every teacher, but like everything else, teaching in the Delta magnifies these sorts of problems. Most of my students' lives are chaotic; most have little or no organizational skill set; many seem unable to make the connection between effort and achievement, let alone attendance and achievement; and quite a few just simply don't care -- until report card day.
With 125 students, when we were about 12 weeks into the school year, I had written over 400 A's -- my symbol for absent, for whatever reason that there is no body in the seat -- in my attendance log.
So ...
I have a weekly vocabulary set of eight words, as most of you know, and a few handouts, study guides, and whatnot each week. These have become more important as we are working on a novel now, and they are completing comprehension and understanding study guides for sets of three or four chapters at a time.
I'm well-organized with tracking paperwork -- a skill brought from my many years managing printing and production of multiple publications. However, also managing 125 little teenage lives as they relate to the mountain of paperwork that an English class generates is another deal altogether. Each has a story about why and how work was missed. She knows she needs to take "that test" or "get that work" but has no idea which test or which work she's talking about. "You remember that was that day I got checked out? That work we did then."
The system that has been working pretty well involves keeping 2 desktop hanging files for each of my 6 periods. Each file box has 6 accordion hanging files, labeled for each period. "Handouts," or the Orange Bin, is where any handouts given out on any day will go, with the missing student's name, and the date on them so no one else can take them and turn them in. "Returned Work," or the Blue Bin, is where any graded homework or classwork is put for students who are not present when the work is returned.
So, in theory, when that Chapter 3-5 study guide is due, and a student says, "But I never got that handout!" I can look at my attendance log, see that she was there that day, and tell her she was given the handout. Sorry. I don't have another one. I don't copy two of everything so you can lose one. "But you remember, I had to leave early to get checked out!" Well, if you weren't here when I handed it out, it's in the Orange Bin with your name on it. Sorry.
Then there is the issue with vocabulary. The weekly words and sample context sentences, which I teach "live" on the board as class notes, are in my daily spiral log -- but that's my Bible, and I don't dare ever let a student take it away from my desk. They can sit in the seat beside my desk to copy any class notes, or a Do Now, but cannot walk away with it. Trouble is, so many are absent so much of the time that they spend way too much time negotiating this copying. So recently I decided to make a few copies of the vocab page and keep them in a file they could get to. Of course, the pages disappear. So I started typing them up on Sunday night so I could put more in the file and print more as needed. You guessed it: I'm constantly printing the list.
Add to this equation the handful of students who are at home suspended for 5 or 10 days at any given time, the student who was in a car accident and will be out for a two months, and so on forever.
EUREKA! Why didn't I think of it before?
8/08 UPDATE: Links to PDFs on the site are no longer active as I do not teach at this school anymore. I left March 28 for medical reasons, and am now teaching at a different school. I have kept the site live as an example of the basic set up. It was very successful (as most things are) for the students who chose to use it.
Lost your handout? No problem. Go print one yourself. Didn't get the vocab words Monday? No problem. They're on the blog. Many students do not have Internet access at home. Many barely have homes. But most have a friend who does, or they can use the school library (when it's open 2 periods a day). I can also send the blog link to the ISS room and the Alternative School building so I don't have to ferry work across campus every day.
I considered doing a daily post with the notes, etc. for each day, but don't want to add to my already bloated workload of carefully documenting each class period and what gets accomplished each day as they each fall behind or move more quickly than others. One step at a time. Maybe I'll add some "helpful links" or something. I'll continue to use the Blue and Orange Bins because they're working for the most part.
I just set it all up tonight, and I'm pretty optimistic about how it will work. I'm keeping it simple, which is key -- not having to create any additional content or do any additional steps, but rather just putting something I'm doing anyway in a convenient and accessible place.
Just another addition to my management toolbox. Heaven knows I need it.
[EDSE 600 REQUIRED BLOG]
Am I following the basic plan I outlined during summer training? Yes. Have I been able to avoid giving essay writing as a consequence? Yes. Do I give math as a consequence? You bet. Write those times tables. To 5, to 10, to 12. Do it again. Problem is, it becomes something else for me to keep track of.
Like many others I am stumped for the meaningful intermediate consequence between the warning and the write-up that doesn't end up taking away instructional time. My school doesn't do detention so I don't have that option. I can't enforce an after-school detention of my own (even though I'm there Tuesdays and Thursdays until 5 and there are late buses) because so many of them work or have childcare responsibilities.
My basic plan of rewards is working well. At first they were too cool for the tickets, but now they work hard to get one for using a vocab word during a discussion, or for asking a challenging question, or for working at the bell, or whatnot. A few have made decorative envelopes to keep them in. They love seeing me reach into my little apron as I head down the aisle in their direction.
Competition between classes has worked, too. I don't have much empty wall space that I can reach without a chair, so the class-on-class competition had to be displayed vertically, and in a place where they couldn't get to it during class changes. So the back of the classroom door is the "Race to Space" where there are six Velcro strips (yes, those of you who know me know how much I detest the sound of Velcro, but that should tell you how much I care about this) with cut-out spaceships numbered for the class periods. They move up or down each day depending on the behavior of the whole class. Peer pressure works.
The progress of the other classes is a huge topic of conversation. And I hear them shushh each other by saying "Hush, y'all. We're gonna move down!" Sometime all I have to do to quiet the hum of chatter is walk silently to the door, slooooowly peel the spaceship off (This is where the vile sound of Velcro comes in handy) and move it down a bit.
The first class to the top of the door gets a full class period break. In the meantime, the first class to the level of the doorknob got to teach me to Crank dat Soulja Boy. I will admit I vetted the competition a bit because there are some classes in which I knew it would be unwise to show vulnerability. First period won. My class of 12 unusually mature sophomores.
I am learning that the front row is not always the best place for the clowns who talk too much. They sit sideways and can catch everyone else's eye. When I put them in the back, no one looks at them. They lose their audience. And it's easy enough for me to stand in the back to be near them.
I am learning that sometimes stopping in the middle of the hall and simply watching them will quiet them in the lunch line.
And I've still got the kitten.
My biggest problem? Not engaging. Not getting sucked into their deal. This is a problem for me in general. I tend to be a responder so it's very difficult not to have a retort when they mouth off. I can get sarcastic. (Who me?) And that's wrong. I've lost it and shamed a student. I lose sleep over that. I've confessed it like a 12-stepper,
[REQUIRED MTC BLOG: TWO QUESTIONS]
What is my favorite time of the day, and why? I think I have to say it's setting my room for the next day. I know, I know, you're thinking it's because it's the end of the day and I'm about to go home ... but that's not it. Yes, it's the end of the day, but it's also the beginning of another.
It's the time between. A threshold. Entre chien et loup: Between the wolf and the dog. The French idiom for twilight, when the light is just dim enough that you can't distinguish between a wolf and a dog. It's also used in a more symbolic sense as a threshold between hope and fear, the familiar and the dangerous. And that's kind of where I am in that time.
At first, I would get my room and the boards all set just out of a sense of responsibility, thinking that I should close the loop between that afternoon and the next morning. The old publishing production habit of eliminating all possible variables because something you haven't thought about yet will surely go awry.
But now I find a wonderful sense of peace in that time. I've written before about Camus' essay on the Myth of Sysiphus -- probably one of my favorite pieces of nonfiction writing --- and I think this hour or so in my classroom is when I feel closely tied to its spirit. There's the obvious metaphor: returning each day to repeat what seems like a futile mind-numbingly difficult task. But Camus was interested not in the struggle to get the rock up the mountain, and not in the tragedy of its repeated descent, but in the moment of Sysiphus' turning, his moment of awareness of his fate.
At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.
I feel that strength each day at this time. I feel stronger than, and ready for, anything that will happen in that room.
The other question: Why should someone apply to Mississippi Teacher Corps? I'll tell you why not to apply: You're not sure what you want to do next, and this seems like a good way to kill two years while you decide. You've never been in the South and are curious about it. That's like saying you're curious about mountains so you're going to climb Everest.
I will tell you that you should really want to do this before you get here. You should be passionate about what you want to do here, and at the same time ready to admit that you will probably not be able to accomplish that goal. But you will find a new goal that you've never dreamed of yet. I've done a few more things in my life than most of my colleagues here, and I will still say, as they do, that this is right up there with the most difficult. (Considering that giving birth did not last 2 years with a one-month break next July)
Please visit first if at all possible. See the Delta. (There's room in most of our homes for you.) Read the blogs and talk to us. Invest in a really good 3-hole punch.
Read Sysiphus.
OK. Enough self-indulgent whining. Here's a huge success:
As I've written before, I'd been frustrated with the vocabulary lessons. My MTC mentor gave me some suggestions, and I changed the way I was teaching. Last week's test netted great results, but I felt a bit guilty that I had spoon-fed the definitions and allowed them to use the example sentences they copied from the board on the test. But at least I now have fewer failing my classes, many did come up with creative and thoughtful defining sentences, and the grade averages are well shored up in defense of next week's nine-week's exam (which counts for 35% of their total grade).
One way to get extra credit on last week's "Vocab Challenge" was to use a form of all eight words in their appropriate context in a single, correctly written sentence. I would give up to100 extra-credit points weighted as a quiz grade. Two got it, if I stretched the definition of a correctly written sentence. Probably 20 got partial credit. (I did it: The damage attributed to the hurricane, which exceeded all previous records, was immense, but was mitigated by the robust levees that held back the fluctuating water level until it could recede, allowing the city to once again enjoy its main attribute of beautiful weather.)
But I digress. Here's the great part:
I give them extra credit in all their other classwork and discussions if they use a vocabulary word correctly -- even going back to previous weeks. (Yes, Mr. T,. you don't use very with immense because immense implies very!) At a faculty meeting Wednesday the biology teacher told me that my students are using my vocab words in her class, telling her about them, and even coaching each other on correct usage. This, my friends, is a teacher's dream.
This week''s Vocab Challenge" is to write a paragraph with all the words that incorporates information from another subject area. Up to 50 points available. We'll see.
Meanwhile, some other teachers have asked to be given my list each week so they can try to use the words.
