Monday, March 28, 2005

My Eyes are Gluey

I survived my first day of my second week, folks. I even had a Project Proposal class afterwards and somehow didn't fall asleep during it. :) How polite of me.

Last night was one of those terrible nights of sleep though... I kept waking up at random times in the night, thinking I hadn't quite fallen asleep yet, and reassuring myself that if I could just get back to sleep, I would have X hours (minutes) to sleep for the night. Ryan stayed the night, and I must have driven him nuts with my tossing and turning!

Today's classes went OK.

English 10B:
1. Journal: Write about the games the children play in the text. Did you think the Boo Radley games were cruel? Why or why not? What kinds of games did you play when you were little? Etc.
2. Journal Tips Handout
3. Poetry Tips Handout
4. Vocabulary--this time I gave them all the definitions and they were to write fifteen sentences using fifteen vocabulary terms.
5. Reading Quiz
6. Time to finish scenes and sentences

Journalism:
1. Journal: Write a news-style article on an event from your spring break.
2. With a partner, interview them about their spring break. Create an article based on that interview. Make sure you don't give anything away with your partner--only answer the questions and don't offer information.
3. Press Conference Articles: Peer editing within newsgroup (this is to promote their editing each other's articles for the final newsgroup publication)
Also--went over due dates (April 5th for reviews and April 11th for articles for the school newspaper)

Ta da!

Tomorrow, I will follow up English 10B with a fabulous round of overhead notes, which is kind of what I wanted to avoid, but the kids are having a really tough time... "I don't get it" is a phrase I hear too often. So we'll do that, and I have a reader's guide (a set of great questions) for chapters 11-19, so I might put together one for some of the earlier questions (general questions) and a packet for later chapters.

My supervisor comes to observe me on Thursday, so I don't want to do too boring of an activity (continuing overheads or packets or anything like that) but I need to make sure they're "getting" the text. So, the plan is this, so far--tomorrow are overhead notes, then the rest of the day as well as the following will be to work by themselves or in partners on the questions I will hand out, and Thursday will be a creative/interprative activity. There are a good handful--a letter to the editor, an essay on "White Privilege", etc.

Journalism is going well. Tomorrow I think I'll have them do a little activity with various articles on Stephen Glass, then they'll watch the 60 Minutes piece, etc. I will give them the chapter on Ethics, which is about 30 pages long and give them the rest of the hour to read it. I want to close up Reviews and Ethics by Wednesday, and move on to Editorials and get that done by Friday (yeah right). They have a unit test on Tuesday, which I haven't even come close to creating, so I suppose I could leave Monday for wrap-up and review.

I know I'm just sort of listing things, which isn't reflection at all, but I'm utterly exhausted. I have to grade the quizzes from today, the fairy tales from last week, and the Journalism journals. I have to create overheads for tomorrow as well as the handout that they'll fill out. At some point, I will plan more then a day in advance and might be able to not freak out at 9:20 the night before. :) Though I'm enjoying student teaching, I keep thinking that I can't wait until I've got more of a routine going... When I know I will teach something again and again, so I can revamp, revise, and repeat. And come home just to grade. Not to plan, grade, reflect, and all of that hoop jumping.

You know, I think it's interesting that some of my cohort are teaching at schools that have pretty set curriculum. They're handed the lesson plans and they just go with it. For me, I'm kind of doing a buffet-style teaching... I'm collecting from the internet, from my cooperating teacher, from previous teachers (thanks to Ms Miller for all the help with the TKAM unit, thanks to Ms Kraszewski and Ms Skeris for all the help with Julius Caesar), and from my own creation (and adaptation of ideas from my post-bac classes). I don't know which is "better" and which is "worse." I would be frustrated if I had such a rigid structure, but at the same time, I could use a break. I could use having done this before... I suppose we all have to start somewhere!

Also on Thursday, such a lovely day--open house. Which means I can't go to my seminar. :( (Unless Jill says I absolutely have to go.) I really enjoy the seminars and the chance to talk to everyone and their experiences. What's worse, this is one of the few times we're going to meet as a whole group, so there are about a dozen people who are with Louise, and I haven't seen them for a couple of weeks. Open House has the parents coming in and "attending" their students' classes from first hour to fifth with six minutes of passing time. In those ten minutes that each teacher has with this group of parents, we'll get to talk to them about what we're doing in class and what kinds of things their children can be expected to learn. Amy said to do a kind of version of our expectations handout, so that's what I'll do!

Oh, and Amy asked me if I felt more comfortable in front of the class this week. She said I seemed more comfortable. :) That makes me feel good. I hope the kids haven't noticed how awkward I am, but I think I cover it up fairly well.

OK, work time. My eyes are gluey. Seriously.

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