End of the School Year Rush

I apologize for not posting as I should have been....in the midst of finishing up our last unit, preparing my portfolio and final presentation, and all the end of the school year activities, I've neglected this blog. Sorry!

Last week was seriously a blur. I had my students work in groups on an activity called Making Comparisons. There were six groups and each group had a specific topic to research regarding islands in Oceania. All my classes do really well working in groups when they have to research information, organize it, and display it on a poster board.

Friday was really frustrating because my students went on a field trip to watch FD's production of High School Musical and when they got back, all they wanted to do was talk about the musical. I had to find ways to move the conversation from High School Musical to Oceania.

Yesterday was the only day I have class time with my students because they have SAT10s for the rest of the week. We had roundtable discussions about their unit projects and I'm really excited to see their final products!

How are you guys doing with your portfolios and final presentation?

Games Work

In summary, games in the classroom work.

From the end of the first quarter to the present, I have been having struggles with my 7th period.  This period   has many issues: its at the end of the day, many of the students are of the naughty variety, and many of the students are of the immature variety.  Due to the time issue and student chemistry, teaching this period has been pretty painful so far until yesterday.  I played a brainstorming game with my students that I found on the link below.  

http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/learninggame/learninggame002b.shtml

This game was successful and showed me that the students can work well together. At the end of the lesson, one of my students came up to me and said he wanted to play the game again next week.  Whew! I must admit that having some success and making progress with this period feels pretty good.  Use games! It works!

The troubled student

Some good news to share with everyone. My student that has had problems throughout the school year has finally broke through the mold. I am getting to him as far as teaching is concerned. I just wish that it  didn't take him this long to realize that education is important. He finally admitted to me that he just did not want to do the work. But lately, he has been turning in all his assignments. But there is another story to that. A couple of my other students, are slacking now. I am still so agitated and I have feelings of failure. But then I tell myself that it might not be me, because I know I am doing many things right, perhaps I need to work on my motivational skills. But as the school year comes to an end, I feel like I have a lot of work to do in regards to classroom management (in all aspects) to better my teaching for next school year.

Selective Attention Test and Monkey Business Illusion

Hey everyone!

I wanted to share these videos that I found on you tube  which can help to prove to your students why its important to pay attention fully in class.  The selective attention test and monkey business illusion found at these links respectively.

Selective Attention Test
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo
Monkey Business Illusion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY

Both tests are a segue that you can use to approach the topic of paying attention to the teacher in the classroom.  If one's attention is split between multiple activities, then that person may missing some other important event.  I also use the law against using your cell phones while driving as a another example of these tests  Enjoy!
 

Presentations and Projects

Since last week was a 5-day week, we had our regular 75-minute classes on Tuesday and Thursday and then had 40-minute classes on Friday. Thursday was a lesson on Russia. Since Friday classes were so short, I took it as an opportunity to let my students work on their public speaking/presentation skills and had them present their current events to the class. I've noticed that more and more students are becoming comfortable speaking in front of the class.

I'm excited to start the next unit on Oceania. I plan on assigning a unit project with different options such as essays/other written work, videos, songs, or artwork. Any tips on grading rubrics?

Long Week Woes

Buenas! This week is the first 5-day week we've had in a while. It doesn't help that I had a church retreat all weekend and got a total of 4 hours of sleep. Dr. Rivera came in for a surprise observation. My lesson was just a simple lecture on two major issues that plague Europeans today. My classes were receptive for the most part. They really don't like traditional lectures but there's just no way to completely eliminate them from classes, especially since ND is a college preparatory school and most teachers in college just lecture the whole time. I have a couple issues with students wearing their uniforms improperly or just wanting to have side conversations but that's nothing new or difficult to deal with.

I hope everyone has a good week!

Scheduling issues

Hello group,

Lately, I have felt bombarded with work other than teaching.  I feel the scheduling for these activities were not well thought out nor were they very conducive to allowing teachers the time before SAT-10s to focus on teaching.  This week is Chamorro week at IMS.  Monday is a shortened schedule day because we have a Chamorro week opening ceremony that we have to attend.  Wednesday is a mini-course day.  Thursday is PTC, and lastly, Friday is also a fiesta day for the kids.  Tuesday is the only day that we have a full day to teach.  The students are not focused in the classroom because of the constant shortened days and activities.  I am so frustrated. 

Differentiating Instruction

Last week Thursday made me realize that differentiating instruction based on entire classes is just as important as differentiating instruction based on individual students. I had my students use a graphic organizer to organize information on the human geography of Europe and encouraged them not only to use bullet points but also to draw or create symbols to help them remember the information they read. Each student had their own graphic organizer to complete and then they were tasked to fill in poster-sized graphic organizers that I prepared for them and posted on the walls of the classroom. My fifth block loved this activity! They were really enthusiastic about gathering the information and were really creative when creating symbols to represent the information they gathered. My sixth block was not so enthused. I've realized that they perform really well with traditional, structured lecture and note-taking but do not do so well when the activity has more freedom and requires creativity. My seventh block was a mix of students who really liked the activity and students who just wanted to finish the block so they could go home.

I've learned that I have to be more creative when planning activities for my students and that sometimes, I have to plan different activities for each of my classes based on what keeps them engaged and the style of learning they are most comfortable with.

Student Exchange

There was an island wide high school student exchange today amongst the public schools and it was a great experience for many of the host students as well as the visiting ones. Many of the visiting students were brought into my class by some of my former students who wanted to show them how Chamoru classes are conducted at Southern High as opposed to their respective schools. I was surprised to hear them say things like, "Oh, we don't really do that much Chamoru speaking.", and, "We usually just sing or cook Chamoru food."

Needless to say, I was shocked. At the beginning of the year, the content standards for Chamoru classes were revised and issued to all of us. This shows me that many teachers are not following the standards and these kids fro other schools are being robbed of their cultural education. I felt horrible about the situation, so I decided to include them my lesson and have them participate with my class in the chanting activity. I gave them a short history lesson on the importance of oral traditions (which was a good review for my students who had heard the lesson prior) in the Micronesian islands and how it can be seen and used in these modern times. The visiting students said that they usually just learn the song and sing it, but there really isn't any explanation or lesson to help support it.

I was glad to hear the visiting students say how much they enjoyed themselves and how Southern High really isn't as "scary" and "ghetto" as they had heard it was. I felt that they were welcomed with open arms by the Southern High community and made new lifelong friends here. I just now hope that they take their positive experiences back with them to their schools and share about the hospitality they received and the fun they had at our school. Here's to hoping!

Post-Spring Break Surprise

Based on all my years as a student, I was mentally preparing myself for the worst first day back from Spring Break...imagining students who just wanted to socialize or who were just checked out of the school year. I was pleasantly surprised when my students came to class ready to start their new unit. I planned for the class to work in groups and, for the first time, grouped the students rather than allowing them to choose their own groups. I got a couple of complaints but was able to settle everyone down and explain their assignment and the rest of the class time went smoothly.

I also implemented "Entrance" and "Exit" tickets yesterday. The entrance tickets helped me gauge what my students knew about our new unit and the exit tickets gave me immediate feedback on what they got out of the class period.

This week is week 1 of the last 7 weeks of classes. There are a number of activities planned for the rest of the year and I just hope my students will continue to cooperate and work diligently until the end of the semester.

Professional Development

We had our 2nd Professional Development Training today. I must say that it was a very productive one. Our administrative team treated us to a great hotel and ballroom and breakfast and lunch. It was a great way to kick-off "back-to-school" after Spring Break. I learned quite a bit today, from special education and the proper IEP process and the possibilities of mainstreaming to the implementation of the Positive Behavior Intervention and Support System (PBIS); this had to be the most important part of the event for me, because it was all-encompassing of the laws of the department, the School Resource Officers (SRO's), Character Education, and Discipline (Referrals). I thought that everything I learned was detrimental to the smoothness of my classroom and the environment. Southern High School is trying to implement the "PBIS" for the sake of creating a more positive environment for everyone involved in the success of education.

Good Week

This week was not as bad as I thought it would be. My students were really cooperative. Then again, it was a pretty laxed week besides the final exam, presentations, and the portfolio submissions. I am not as pleased though with the amount of missing assignments. I might have some students failing my class. And of course, the student that I have been having problems with. I appreciate the suggestions made by Dr. Rivera regarding my timing strategies on certain tasks. I tried it the rest of the week and I tell you, It really helped. I created a better structure for my classroom. The students did not feel lost, but some did feel the pressure. Behavior problems still occur during my 4th period, however we did discuss the problems. I am feeling the pressure for the last two months of the school year.

For Geri (:

The website I use to download youtube videos is keepvid.com. I hope it works for you!

Flexibility is a Must

This post is a catch-up post from last week.

The College of Cardinals elected Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio to be the 266th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church last Thursday. He took the name Pope Francis in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi. The election of the first Pope from Latin America played well into my unit on Latin America so I did a quick lesson plan change that morning and hoped for the best. I had each of my classes report to the Library Media Center for their scheduled blocks. I prepared a playlist of videos to show my students what was going on in the Vatican and to show them our new Latin American Pope. We talked about the significance of a non-European Pope, the significance of the name Francis, and our hopes for the church under new leadership. My students were buzzing with questions and I tried my best to answer them but there were a few that I just had to say I'd get back to them because I just didn't have an answer.

After our conversation about the Pope, I segued into current events and assigned each student a Latin American country and had them use the computers in the LMC to research one article regarding their country and to summarize or restate the information mimicking the form of "tweets" or short posts on the social networking site Twitter. They did not actually use Twitter but instead used Microsoft word to compose their "tweets" and then emailed their finished products to me. I value the skill of understanding concepts well enough to state them simply and I want to help my students hone in on it and use it not only in school but also in their lives in general. Using a social networking site that they are familiar with allows the students to use pre-exisisting framework in their minds and make accommodations for the new information they researched.

Beware of Competition in the Classroom!

I decided to play a review game with my students yesterday to help them prepare for their unit 3 test. I found a cool game called Bluff online and put a KeyNote presentation together with questions and answers. The winning team's reward is choosing the movie we'd watch after the test tomorrow (from a planned list, of course). I didn't think it would get too competitive because the reward wasn't extra credit or anything like that but boy was I wrong! The teams were getting so competitive that some students were getting mad at their teammates when they missed a question or when they lost points because someone spoke out of turn. I had to remind the students to be respectful to one an another. Other than fierce competition, each class went well. It was obvious that some students worked on their study guides over the weekend and even more obvious that some didn't even bother looking at it. I'm excited to see how they all do on their test tomorrow.

Friday is Parent Teacher Comference and I'm getting a little nervous because it is my first conference as a teacher. I'll definitely remember to start with the positive and move on to what needs improvement.

I hope everyone's last week before spring break is going well!

Experience after the Spring Break

This past week was a bit smoother than last week, considering that my students and I attended the Charter Day festivities this past Tuesday at the University of Guam. This week I decided to have the students be the teachers. They were responsible for presenting the information that I provided for them. They were also responsible for leading the class discussion, in a group of 7 or 8 of them. Experience: I was really pleased because my student that I have been having a hard time with "the one I also bring up in class" was participating, he was taking the lead on Thursday and Friday. He was reading and writing and I was amazed. I tried something different, I assigned leaders of the group, and out of curiosity, I decided to make him the leader, and he took it seriously. I will be trying this again next week.

Can someone please tell me how the students will be acting after they return from Spring Break, considering the Summer will be fast approaching.

Its only one more week until spring break...

This week was one of the most hectic weeks I have ever experienced in terms of working at my school site.  The demands that were placed on the teachers of IMS has been increasing since the middle of the year.  I have heard this advice from other people that I need to roll with the punches and do what I am told. Thankfully, I am allowed to vent on this blog and voice some concerns I am having with this process.  Admin. oversees the planning of these schedules.  Was it really necessary to have a mini-course day after a school-wide field trip and a day before the math culminating activity/half-day teacher staff development!  I mean it seems as if admin. wants to rush into completing these tasks due to the impending spring break.  What is a simple decision to them takes its toll on the people who they rely on to execute these plans, the teachers.  I am not alone in my frustrations as other members of my team feel the same way.  What do you think fellow interns/student teachers?

Importance of Chamoru Month

Buenas todos hamyo!

This is my first blog for the course, so hopefully I can get some feedback from all of you and utilize this blog to its maximum potential. As we all know, this month is Mes Chamoru, or Chamoru Month. We are supposed to be using this month to perpetuate and promote the indigenous culture and language of our beautiful archipelago, but it seems that most of the students don't see it as an opportunity to to just that, they see it only as an excuse to have a fiesta and "party out."

This is rather disheartening because living the culture and language is something that should be near and dear to all of our hearts, but we do live in a very colonized and American society, so its understandable. I'm trying hard to get the students to understand the importance of learning the language and culture, but some of them don't seem to care because they see no economic value to it.

I've shown examples of cultures who have completely lost their language and indigenous practices and how we do NOT want to be like that and it has gotten through to quite a number of them. Also, during lunch time I showed the movie, "Avatar", and used it as an example of outside nations coming into a peaceful and stable society and taking over. I compared the humans to Spaniards, Japanese, and American soldiers and forces who controlled us, and the Navi people as the indigenous Chamoru race. I found that doing this really made a difference and kind of rallied a sense of pride amongst my students because they now saw what was taken from them and how hard our people had to fight for what little we still have left.

Please educate your students this month on the importance of celebrating Mes Chamoru!

Group Work and Snowballs and Rowdy Students, oh my!

Buenas tatdes!

Yesterday was a crazy day. I got to school early to print my lesson plan and handouts for my classes but the internet was down in the village so I couldn't access my cloud drive online. I had an early morning freak out session and then remembered I could tether my phone to my computer to access my drive...technology: can't live with it or without it! Crisis number one of the day was an easy fix.

Dr. Rivera came to observe my 5th block. Since I had such a heavy lecture last week, I decided to break down the last two sections of the chapter we're working on, grouped my students in groups of 3 or 4, and assigned each group a small section in the chapter to read and outline key points on a guided outline I provided them. After the groups outlined their key points, each group presented their section to  the class. Originally, I wanted the rest of the class to take notes during the presentations but I learned quickly that it wouldn't work out for the amount of time we had in class. My quick solution was to just have each group present their information to the class and then I had them turn in their outlines so I could consolidate all the groups' outlines into one and will distribute the consolidated outline in our next class meeting.

My students were particularly rowdy yesterday. I don't know what it was but there were a few groups who wanted to talk about everything and anything under the sun--except what we were studying. It was so tiring trying to keep them on task.

After the group presentations, we did a snowball activity. Each student was instructed to write down one thing they learned from the sections we covered in class and one question they had regarding the sections we covered. Then we formed a circle around the classroom, crumpled each paper, threw them around for a minute, and then read each one aloud. It was somewhat chaotic but it was manageable.

I definitely need to try assigning groups instead of letting students choose their own groups. I didn't want to do this at first because I can just imagine the time that will be wasted while the students complain about their group members. Also, most groups stay on task even when they choose their own groups....I only have issues with one or two groups in each block I teach.

Anyone have any alternatives to lecturing that have worked well in your classrooms?

Never forget your word search puzzles!

March 8
Today wasn't very good for me. I used today as a catch up day, so that my students could finish assignments I gave them this week.  I really do not like days like this because it seems that if students are done early they have no self control at all.  I totally forgot to print out some word search puzzles prior to this.  Thus, the students who were finished early had nothing to do.  What a day! I need to remember the word search puzzles for next time.  On the bright side, teaching essay writing this year vs. last year I have found to be more successful.  Students are better grasping the concepts so my self efficacy is higher.

March 7 Reflection

Today was a long, tiring day. I had three 75-minute blocks. My students were surprisingly well-behaved and attentive, even though it was a long lecture. We are doing a unit on Latin America and the lecture focused on Mexico and the Caribbean. At the beginning of class, we went over the countries that would be on their map test next week. Then I explained that I was going to collect their notes at the end of class and they would be counted toward their participation grade. This seemed like enough motivation for them to be attentive because they all were engaged in the lesson and asked really good questions, which let me know that they were not only paying attention but also that they were thinking about the information and applying it to a "bigger picture" in their minds. To tap into their prior knowledge base, I started my lecture by asking them to compare two pictures: one was of the Spanish conquest of Guam and the other was the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Many students were able to draw connections between the influence of Spanish colonialism on the lives and culture of the natives of both Mexico and Guam. My lecture ended up being longer than I planned because the students were asking really good questions regarding the material being presented. As a closing activity, I passed out the lyrics to "War" by Bob Marley and we listened to the song as a class. After the song, we discussed how reggae music in the Caribbean was influenced by social problems and was also used to influence social change. My students were really receptive and responsive during discussion. I plan to use music again in future lesson plans. 

My main concern at this point is learning new ways to differentiate instruction. My class size ranges from 26-28 students and there is a wide spectrum of learning abilities in each class. Suggestions will be greatly appreciated!

Week 1

Hafa Adai Colleagues,

It was a pretty hectic week, but an experience nonetheless. It really is my fourth period class. It is the largest class, not to mention, the last period of the day. It takes a while to settle them down. But as soon as I do settle them down, it's smooth sailing from there, most of the time. I have had some bad experiences this week especially when it came to homework submission. My students had two assignments due this week and at the most 3 people turned it in. I had to use Thursday as a day to make-up and catch up with assignments, and it delayed my lesson, one day. But I am flexible. Most of the excuses I heard was "I forgot," "I was lazy," "I was tired," "I had to clean the yard," etc. Should I be more strict on homework and assignment submission?

A Teacher in Need of Advice.

Hi fellow interns

I am pretty much new to this online blog experience. I will try my best.  For the most part, today went well. I am noticing that my students are acting out at a higher frequency lately.  I feel that it's due to it being mid-third quarter.  Are the rest of you experiencing something similar?