Fab Five Friday

I totally swiped the idea for todays post form upward not inward, but I had to because I just love it. I think their five question questionnaire is an excellent exercise in self reflection. You can do it too!

1. This week I am grateful for- My awesome hardworking husband and my sweet kiddos. The love I get at home helps me survive the roughest days at work.
2. This week I enjoyed- Getting to see the Seniors get ready to leave for the graduation duty. I didn't have to actually go to graduation this year (alright, I'm grateful for that too), but getting to help them get ready and seeing them all dolled up was exciting. 
3. This week I learned- I am done with speculating. Life is interesting enough without playing the "what if ..?" game. I need to trust in God more and work with the challenges I already have before me. 
4. This week I accomplished - Getting my classroom packed up and my sign off sheet done early! It only took five years for me to figure out how to get on top of that.
5. I am looking forward to - AP Human Geography. I will be teaching it next year for one class period and I am thrilled. It is a great opportunity to work with student who are eager to learn and for me to approach the material in a new way. I normally teach regular World Geography which is different.

You can check out How the ladies at upward not inward answered their questionnaire by going to their site here. What is going on in your world this week? You can share your own reflections there or in the comments here. I hope everyone has a blessed weekend.

Take care,

Mrs.PJ

Please, pretty please, click, clickety, click. Thanks so much!

renewed look and lesson plan ideas

        Welcome back to rendered and renewed!  Sorry it has been about a week since my last post. I was waiting to reveal the new look for R&R and I didn't want to post while it was "under construction." After many attempts to redo the banner myself I finally went to Banner Booth, which is probably what I should have done in the first place. I always want to try to do everything myself and sometimes it is just better to let someone with more expertise take over. I hope that you like the clean new look. I guess this was my first spring cleaning project.

         I don't know what it is about this time of year, but I just want to reclaim my home and workspace from the clutter. We already refreshed the flower bed and vegetable gardens over spring break. I have been working on purging my desk of excessive stuff that seems to pile up. Even though the weather is still a little cool I am ready to pack up our winter clothes. I have been revamping a lot of my lesson plans at work.

         I know we still have about two months of school left, but already I am getting into that thought process, "Okay, next year I need to ........."  I am consolidating lesson plans, making digital backups of all of my stuff, searching for new resources to incorporate into next year. By the way, I am way better at planning lessons and executing them then grading them. That is one of the reasons why my desk accumulates clutter. It is mostly work I need to grade. I will get it done, I promise. In the meantime I am enjoying beefing up my lesson plans for next year. Here are some of my favorite teacher blogs:

• The Geography Lady @ http://texasgeography.wordpress.com/  - Clearly this website was designed with her students in mind, but it is chock full of Geography content that other teachers can incorporate into their classes (um, I mean mine). It looks like this Lady has been blogging for quite some time about her adventures in the classroom and in her real world travels. She has posted lot's of great stuff here that you can spend way too much time perusing. 
• Dandelions and Dragonflies @ http://dandelionsdragonflies.blogspot.com/ - She blogs about teaching a way younger group than what I do, but I love what she does. She always has creative and fun ideas to share including photo's of her very coordinated classroom. This blog is one of the ones that inspired me to start my own. Even if you don't teach, I encourage you to check this one out. 
•  Edna Sackson @ http://whatedsaid.wordpress.com/about-2/ - Ms. Sackson is an education expert in Australia and I love reading her posts. She is very active in teaching and leading other teachers and I appreciate that she shares her insights with the rest of the world. It is interesting to see that teachers halfway around the world are facing the same challenges we do here in the United States. 

       If you like those and are looking for more then just check out my page for teachers by clicking on the previous orange text or the link in the left hand column. There are not detailed descriptions there, so it is kind of like a treasure hunt. Most of the things posted to that page are sites that I use on a regular basis, so if you have any questions about them let me know. If you are spring cleaning or planning ahead I hope your end results are what you aim for. 

Take care,

Mrs. PJ

     

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Well, what do you know?

      Most people in education have heard of the KWL chart as a way to establish prior knowledge. Don't worry I'm not about to explain those self explanatory graphic organizers.

• What do you Know?
• What do you Want to know?
• What did you Learn?

      Unfortunately so have the kids,  and the sight of a KWL chart just makes them groan. So as teachers we have to be sneaky sometimes to figure out what those kids already know. Why bother you might ask? I know sometimes it seems like those little angels come into our rooms as blank slates, but that is far from true. They have been in many classrooms sitting in front of many teachers long before they came in to our classrooms. Plus everything they learn form each other, television, and those smart phones growing out of their arms.

     I digress, back to the importance of prior knowledge. If we can connect what we are teaching to something that they already know then they understand it better and retain it longer.  As if the brain is a giant spider web of knowledge. If you don't find something to stick it to, then it just escapes. It can be tough finding that prior knowledge. At the first whiff of new material some students will fake ignorance to avoid being called on. But if they are confident that they already know something about the topic, then they are excited to expand that knowledge. 

     Questioning helps. My general rule of thumb is that I need to be asking the students just as many questions as they are asking me. For example at the beginning of the school year we study physical geography. Before we even start I tell the kids, "Okay, you guys are going to ace this next unit because you already know all of this stuff. Physical geography is just like the physical science you learned last year. Let's see, do you remember what the different layers of the earth are? Oh, that was easy, what about the movement of the plates? What are the different types? Show me with your hands. What does that movement create?" and so on and so on. They get so excited telling me what they know. 

      Another way to find out what they know is to hand them the dry erase marker or chalk. You will always have shy kids, but if you make everyone take a turn it eases the embarrassment.  Just put a starter topic up and have the kids web everything they know for you. Teach high school and don't have enough board room for six classes? Just snap a picture with a digital camera and erase the board.  Remember, while they might act like it sometimes, they weren't really born yesterday. So, be creative, be sneaky, but do whatever you need to do to find out what they already know. You will see improvement in your retention rate. 

Lessons I learned this week.

     School isn't just for the kids you know. It is finally Friday, so I thought I would reflect on a few of the things that I learned this week.
1. It is not a good idea to watch films that you have not previewed. We got stuck watching a film to wrap up a lesson about religion in the Middle East because I borrowed the lesson from someone else. It was the most boring film ever. I mean the narrater.....talked.....like.....this......the .....whole ....film.  I just wanted to shout "Spit it out already!"  The kids were not impressed either. It could have been worse. Once when I was subbing the teacher left a video and a note that instructed me to stand next to the TV and censor it with a piece of cardboard when anything obscene came on.  Seriously.
2. Some kids can be reformed. One of my students used to skip class every time I let her go to the bathroom. I didn't let her go anywhere for three weeks and I called her mom when she skipped after school tutoring that she was supposed to attend. Today she asked to go to the bathroom. She really did look like she was about to have an accident, so I let her go and she actually came back this time.
3. Listening to gossip is lame. I know, the short term thrill of getting the latest dirt is entertaining, but in the end I find myself losing more and more respect for my peers and supervisors.
4. The best lessons are the ones you take time to develop yourself. I came up with a mapping activity that I used last week. It took me three days to get the whole thing together because I had to find a bunch of maps, print and laminate them. It went really well and this week four other Geography teachers have borrowed it. They all gave me positive feedback. I wish I had time to develop lessons like that all of the time. A teacher workday once a grading period would be nice.
5. Don't give a test on Valentine's Day because the kids will be too hyped up on sugar to focus on the task at hand. This is year five, so you would think that I would have figured that one out by now. Speaking of Valentine's day, I hope that you had a nice one.

A few words

1st

Here is my word wall for the unit we just did on Southwest Asia.

  I'm assuming that most school districts require word walls now. I figure if I have to do it then it might as well be a good one. Unfortunately our curriculum bundles only allots ten days for this unit, so this is coming down tomorrow. Then I have to figure out how I am going to do the wall for Africa.

2nd

  "Mom..I mean Mrs.PJ. OMG Miss, I can't believe I just called you that." It is quite alright. Actually I consider it the ultimate teacher compliment. It must mean I am nagging my students just right. 

3rd

   Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent. We are supposed to forgo something for forty days to remind us of the suffering of others. I had a hard time deciding this year, but I finally settled on TV. I probably wouldn't have picked that if we had already started watching this season of Walking Dead, but since we haven't, it will just have to sit in the DVR for a month. Wish me luck. Last year I gave up gossip. That didn't exactly worked the way I had hoped. Right now I pretty much watch TV after the kids go to bed and my time would probably be better spent sleeping. We will see how it goes. 

Public vs. Private

     I teach at a public high school. Two years ago there were budget cuts by the state that resulted in twenty jobs being lost on my campus. A good friend of mine ended up at an all boys Christian private school. He invited us to an event (fundraiser) that they hosted for Epiphany last night. It was a fun excuse to get dressed up, go out and spend time with friends outside of school. There was food and music. It was pretty entertaining.
     We ended up sitting at a big table with the following people: myself, my husband who is a plumber, two friends that also teach public school, one of their spouses that works at an group home for kids, and an orthopedic surgeon and his homemaker wife. The majority of people in attendance were parents of students at this school. I'm thinking this one surgeon probably makes more money then the rest of us at the table combined. So they start asking us questions about what it is like to be at a public school. What is our average class size? This year about 26, but last year was worse. This private school has a 10 to 1 student teacher ratio. They want to know how bad is the bullying on our campus. We explain that even though our kids are in a rough area of town they really look out for each other. Our campus is in a neighborhood plagued by poverty, there are active gangs in the area, and a small percentage of our students don't speak english, a larger percentage don't have two parents at home.
      The wife of the surgeon asks if we are afraid to be there. No, we love being there. The husband starts trying to justify their decision to spend $20,000 a year to send their kids to private schools. The students are all motivated, they get more direct instruction, yadaa,yadda, yadda. I'm thinking, look man, you don't have to explain anything to me. All parents want the best for their kids. Not all parents can afford to send their kids to private schools. Not all parents have time to help their kids do homework or go to athletic events. Some parents didn't graduate from high school themselves and they don't know how to help their kids get a good education. I believe everyone deserves the opportunity to have a quality education no matter what their background.  Everyone should have a chance to better themselves and their family. That is why I teach public school. It is a challenge sometimes, I like to say it is a new adventure everyday. Seeing those kids graduate makes it worthwhile.