Wow, this week just flew by! I guess it was because the subject matter was interesting to me personally and maybe to the students as well because they had exemplary behavior this week. It didn’t hurt that the week started with a video on Lewis & Clark and ended with a Jeopardy review followed by a chapter test. It gave me great fulfillment to hear many of my students comment prior to the test that they felt they knew all the answers because for some reason, this section was more interesting and memorable than most. This is why one becomes a teacher!
Aside from teaching two periods this week, I was also running my TPA #3 experiments with period four. TPA #3 is all about assessments, so I put several in place so I could choose the best one to write about. As required, I also had a couple of scaffolds for key individuals, which hopefully will contribute to their assessment scores. As a final assessment, I can also see how period four did on their chapter test.
As stated earlier, Monday was mostly a video on Lewis & Clark. We were also able to start the last section (war of 1812), except for the ELL class. I had the ELL class last week, and they got behind as a result. My master teacher had to work hard to catch them back up. I felt bad about this – in just one week of teaching that class, I had put them about two days behind. I need to learn how to pace the ELL class better, yet still get them the education they need to succeed.
Tuesday was a continuation of the War of 1812. The materials presented were interesting and the students paid attention. Still, I couldn’t help but notice that my master teacher’s classes were much quieter than mine, so between classes, I asked her how she could get her classes so quiet. She said she was able to because: 1) this is a looped class and they have had her for 1.5 years at this point; 2) at the beginning of the year last year, she was handing out detentions like they were candy, thus showing that she was serious about class disruptions. She further went on to state that unless I started handing out detentions, I would be continually tested. With this new knowledge, I ran the normally noisy fourth period with a little more firmness, and with detentions slips in my hand and you know what, they were quiet and attentive!
Wednesday was nice and easy. For fourth period, I ran an experiment just for fun. At the end of the War of 1812 section, I had table groups act out a particular historical event from the whole unit of study by way of review. My goal was to have them sequence this event. Most groups did not sequence very well, but the rest of the class was able to guess what the event was.
Thursday was Jeopardy day, which went well.
Friday was the chapter test. Most of the classes finished well ahead of time, so in three of the classes, I was able to preview what I would be teaching next week by talking about the flag that was the inspiration for the Star Spangled Banner. Next week, I’ll be teaching all five periods, and the materials will focus on: Music, Art, Dance and Literature from the 1800s. As you can see, this unit combines history and humanities.