I have a Big Boy, like It's not All Flowers and Sausages. But mine is in HS and is much larger. The behavior appears to be the same. He jumps on the desks, pushes and threatens students who are smaller, won't do the work, and won't stay seated.
Talking with the parents and writing him up has done no good. He feels that I am persecuting him when I write up his inappropriate behavior, and I am beginning to believe he doesn't understand how inappropriate it is. And I don't know how to explain it to him.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Getting them to write
A teacher in our school - who teaches Calculus - has his AP kids do the following to study for the AP exam. They are to create a notebook and on each page, define a concept (he provides them with a list of about 100) and give an example. Then, because this is an AP class, he asks them to provide a theme for the notebook that tells him something about the student.
I have been noodling this around for a couple of weeks, trying to figure out how to use this with my students and their end of course test. I have been doing a notebook with them, but I provide the notes and they copy. I have finally decided to do the same thing as Mr. Calculus, with a couple of changes. I will provide them with a list. They are to write a concept per page, define it, provide the steps and give an example. (They can intersperse the steps with the example if tht is easier for them) This will be an optional activity (as I can guarantee they won't all do this) and will replace their lowest test grade.
I have spoken with the math teachers I support - they are willing to let it replace their lowest test grade as well.
I am hoping this will help them with the math.
I have been noodling this around for a couple of weeks, trying to figure out how to use this with my students and their end of course test. I have been doing a notebook with them, but I provide the notes and they copy. I have finally decided to do the same thing as Mr. Calculus, with a couple of changes. I will provide them with a list. They are to write a concept per page, define it, provide the steps and give an example. (They can intersperse the steps with the example if tht is easier for them) This will be an optional activity (as I can guarantee they won't all do this) and will replace their lowest test grade.
I have spoken with the math teachers I support - they are willing to let it replace their lowest test grade as well.
I am hoping this will help them with the math.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
There's a light in the tunnel
The grades are awful and we can't get the kids to take it seriously. But even with that wretched news, a student who has given me nothing but grief (telling me pointedly which teachers he liked - my name was not among them) handed me Mardi Gras beads today. I laughed and gave them back and told him that the act of giving me the beads meant so much more to me than the beads would, so he should enjoy the beads and I would enjoy the memory.,
Monday, February 23, 2009
Commentary
We are supposed to write commentary on student work and display it. It is difficult to do this with standard math work ("great job" - but how much more can you say?). I asked them to do some writing today, to analyze graphs. But they gave me numbers and no more.
In what I hope is a flash of brilliance, I came up with this: I wrote comments on the graphs which I will give them tomorrow with examples of commentaries I have written on student work. Then I will ask them to critique MY work with commentary.
First test: The students did poorly on this test [note: this was the same as test B on the first page]. While there were passing grades, in each class more than 75% filed the test. Look at the Top 25% in each class. The beginning number is less than 70 in each case and the top number is less than 70% in two cases. I would assume that the students were not prepared for this test and require remediation.
Second test: The students did much better on this test,. Three of the classes have passing grades in the bottom 25%. All of the classes have As in the middle 50%. Class C did the most poorly as over 50% failed the test.
Maybe this will get them thinking on the level I'd like. My writing is not long - it tends to be terse. Maybe this will help them see I am not looking for a novel, just understanding.
In what I hope is a flash of brilliance, I came up with this: I wrote comments on the graphs which I will give them tomorrow with examples of commentaries I have written on student work. Then I will ask them to critique MY work with commentary.
First test: The students did poorly on this test [note: this was the same as test B on the first page]. While there were passing grades, in each class more than 75% filed the test. Look at the Top 25% in each class. The beginning number is less than 70 in each case and the top number is less than 70% in two cases. I would assume that the students were not prepared for this test and require remediation.
Second test: The students did much better on this test,. Three of the classes have passing grades in the bottom 25%. All of the classes have As in the middle 50%. Class C did the most poorly as over 50% failed the test.
Maybe this will get them thinking on the level I'd like. My writing is not long - it tends to be terse. Maybe this will help them see I am not looking for a novel, just understanding.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
BBC Top 100 Books
BBC Top 100 Books
Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total read at the bottom.
--
Book List:
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X+
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X+
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible X+
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (X+ - some, mostly the comedies)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier X+
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell X+
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy *
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams *
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky *
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy *
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X+
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X+
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini *
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X+
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving X
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins X
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold X
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville X
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom X
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams X
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute X
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas X+
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo X
Not bad - 51
BBC Top 100 Books
--
Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total read at the bottom.
--
Book List:
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X+
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X+
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X+
6 The Bible X+
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X+
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X+
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (X+ - some, mostly the comedies)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier X+
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X+
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell X
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X+
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X+
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X+
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X+
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving X
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins X
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X+
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel X+
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold X
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville X
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom X
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams X
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute X
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo X
Friday, February 20, 2009
Asking for help
I cannot get the idea across to my students that they need to ask for help if they don't understand something. This seems to be an expression of weakness that they cannot allow themselves.
I wish they could see how many times we, as teachers, ask each other for help. I certainly cannot do my job in a vacuum and do not see it as a weakness when I ask for help.
I wish they could see how many times we, as teachers, ask each other for help. I certainly cannot do my job in a vacuum and do not see it as a weakness when I ask for help.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
On catch up work
On said...
I would tell each of the students that they can make up ALL of their late assignments by taking the test (chapter test, unit test, whatever). And the score on the test would be used for each of the back assignments and quizzes leading up to the evaluation. Oh, and there would be a choice of three periods (days) that they would have to make it up. Otherwise it would be a zero (along with the other work of course). 20 years of teaching tells me that the students who are clueless will fail - the teacher only has one thing to grade (yeah) and the student is released from the self-created pressure OR the student will pass because he/she already knows the material but has played these games in the past.. and obviously didn't learn the 'intended lesson'. Long and short, I have one paper to grade, the student thinks they one upped me (until they get the grade) and administration is happy that the matter has been settled.
Use teaching time to teach the willing while giving the others a chance to reform.
I love it.
Friday, February 13, 2009
It's all in the definition
SassyChic refuses to work in my class or do any recovery, usually with attitude. I did an assignment this week which about a third really GOT and the rest really didn't. So, I gave the second group a second day - with explanations - to redo the work. SassyChic dumped her assignment on my desk with the comment "Here's your work" about 2 minutes after I gave it to them to do.
I said - so you don't want to do the work?
Later she stopped by my door and we had this conversation:
SassyChic: Did you call my mother?
Me: Yes
SC: what did you tell her?
Me: That you refused to do my work.
SC: I didn't refuse.
Me: You dumped it on my desk and said you wouldn't do it. That's my definition of refuse.
SC: You need a new dictionary.
Me: What do you call it?
SC: I didn't do it.
Me: OK
SC: I didn't understand it.
Me: So, dumping it on my desk, saying you won't do it means that you need help? We'll talk next week.
And I need a new dictionary?
I said - so you don't want to do the work?
Later she stopped by my door and we had this conversation:
SassyChic: Did you call my mother?
Me: Yes
SC: what did you tell her?
Me: That you refused to do my work.
SC: I didn't refuse.
Me: You dumped it on my desk and said you wouldn't do it. That's my definition of refuse.
SC: You need a new dictionary.
Me: What do you call it?
SC: I didn't do it.
Me: OK
SC: I didn't understand it.
Me: So, dumping it on my desk, saying you won't do it means that you need help? We'll talk next week.
And I need a new dictionary?
Monday, February 9, 2009
Grade Inflation
The headline in the AJC is that grades in courses don't match the end of course scores. Well, duh. The districts all do some sort of grade recovery and most of us can only retain our jobs if we don't fail "too many." However many that is.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Meetings
Apparently CTG was in the same professional development that we were this week. You know - two hours of lecture on why should lecture no more than ten or fifteen minutes at a time.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Disrespect and love
I have a student who is rude and talks too much. She failes math because she doesn''t listen - but you cannot listen when you are talking.
Today, as I tried to review for a quiz, she told the class that I have an attitude, that she is going to have people write letters on how I don't teach - I can't even remember all that she said. There is no argument for any of this and I meet with her mother next week. I don't know what I did to annoy her - but this has gone on way too long. I have written her up and she is always gleeful that she gets no punishment for it.
The good new that came out of this? Another girl asked to talk with me out in the hall. When I went out, she said "I did well at the beginning of the year. I am failing now. Is it where I sit? Am I not listening? Has the work gotten harder? All of the above?"
I told her she should be an A student. And I asked her where she sits. (Yes, I do know - next to the other girl.) I also pointed out I told them two weeks ago that teachers work harder to make the students pass the first semester. At this point, we feel they should know how to fix the problems.
I also told her these were adult questions.
We'll see where she sits tomorrow.
And in the next class, 4 of the kids spontaneously told me that I make the math make sense. I think I will listen to the first girl but hold the other comments close to my heart.
They will be letting a dozen teachers go - hopefully through attrition. I hate this.
Today, as I tried to review for a quiz, she told the class that I have an attitude, that she is going to have people write letters on how I don't teach - I can't even remember all that she said. There is no argument for any of this and I meet with her mother next week. I don't know what I did to annoy her - but this has gone on way too long. I have written her up and she is always gleeful that she gets no punishment for it.
The good new that came out of this? Another girl asked to talk with me out in the hall. When I went out, she said "I did well at the beginning of the year. I am failing now. Is it where I sit? Am I not listening? Has the work gotten harder? All of the above?"
I told her she should be an A student. And I asked her where she sits. (Yes, I do know - next to the other girl.) I also pointed out I told them two weeks ago that teachers work harder to make the students pass the first semester. At this point, we feel they should know how to fix the problems.
I also told her these were adult questions.
We'll see where she sits tomorrow.
And in the next class, 4 of the kids spontaneously told me that I make the math make sense. I think I will listen to the first girl but hold the other comments close to my heart.
They will be letting a dozen teachers go - hopefully through attrition. I hate this.
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