Whew. Eight weeks down. I feel like I’ve been doing this forever. Even better: most days, I feel like I could continue to do this forever. I have established routines and procedures in my classroom that the students, for the most part, completely embrace. I am building some really great relationships with my students, and I am starting to feel more comfortable with developing creative and engaging lessons for the students.
I don’t know how it happened, but my students come into my classroom every day and get straight to work on their warmup. They are quiet and focused on the task. I hear Miss History next door yelling at her kids to sit down and be quiet, and I just want to hug mine for following my procedures. I am using Grammar With a Giggle for my warmups, and the students are really getting into it. I have given control of it to the students, so for the first 15 minutes of class, they run the warmup: they decide who looks up the vocabulary word(s) and writes it on board, they decide who makes the corrections on the board, and they are even starting to take my cue and ask the correctors why they made each correction. I love it: I just stand to the side and monitor. I have seen huge improvements in their grammar usage and vocabulary (they love to use “pulchritudinous” and “obstreperous” in their everyday speech at school!), and my LA AP has commented that she is very impressed with what I am doing with my kids.
9 week final exams are scheduled for next week, so I am finished teaching the cirriculum for first quarter. We’ll see on Tuesday how much the kids actually learned and retained. During our review on Friday, they were all commenting on how easy the questions were. I hope they meant it.
I teach four classes of Language Arts. I have very few problems with three of the class, but my first period class is completely unruly (to my standards). That class seems to think that days when I give engaging lessons, they are free to do whatever they want: chat, homework for other classes, sleep, throw paper across the room. When I give boring seatwork, though, they are focused and on task. On Thursday, I had had it, so I decided to make an example of that class. I don’t know if this is what “good” teachers do, but it is what I am going to do. At least for right now (and until I can get a better idea).
I have given this speech to each class: “As a team, you (students) have told me over and over again that you wished we could do more fun things in class. You want to be able to move around and do things instead of just taking notes. I want that for you, too. But you need to know that these kinds of lessons are not a right. They are a privelege that you have to earn. First period has taken advantage of engaging lessons for a week now, so for all next week, they will be doing seatwork. The rest of my classes have behaved wonderfully during the engaging lessons: they have fun while they learn, but when I need their attention, they get quiet and focused on me again. They have managed to stay on task and complete the lesson. They have shown me that I can trust them with fun activities. While first period does boring seatwork next week, the rest of my classes will participate in more interactive activities.”
When I gave this speech, first period just sat there, acting unconcerned. The rest of the classes, though, were very excited. In homeroom on Friday, I overheard some 6th period students telling a 1st period student that Mrs. Strangenewteacher is going to make sure that he has no fun next week. The speech seemed to make the other classes want to behave better : they almost seem to know that I’m giving them a good opportunity. First period: well, they just don’t seem to get it.
