Week 16- Teaching Practice

Week 16

In the last week, I had an review days for both subjects I teach as well as test days for both as well. For my Algebra II and Algebra I students, I created Jeopardy PowerPoints for my students that were related to their test content. This was a long process, but my students found it very fun for Algebra II. As for Algebra I, many of them liked it, but it was a big step to take and some of them handled it well. Others did not try problems or were totally off-task. 

This review day showed something that I am continuing to struggle with and that is classroom management. This is something that is difficult for me because I am a new teacher and I am young. Furthermore, I find this process of classroom management difficult because many standard level students do not care about their grades at all and the grading policy for BCPS allows them to skate by since attendance, participation, and behavior do not affect their grades anymore. This grading policy has caused issues for even veteran teachers, so I know that I am not the only one struggling with students who complete no work and disrupt class on a regular basis. 

I found the review game to be successful in general and I felt it helped students get ready for the test. I felt that many students who normally are not involved got involved in most classes. My one class had only 5 of the 15 students completing the problems, so I stopped the review and gave them book work for the entire class after that. I have grown tired of students who are lazy and it does not stop. As a teacher, I feel like I am doing everything within my ability to make the class fun for them, but it does not matter. 

Week 15- Teaching Practice

Week 15 

In the last week, I worked on classroom management with little improvement. I started with rearranging seats of students and continuing progressive discipline with phone calls and referrals. This has worked about half of the time, half of the parents discipline their children, the other half do not or the children do not care what their parents say or do. In addition, I chose table leaders for each group and said that it was their responsibility to get their table quiet when I was asking my students to regroup after a discussion or problem time. This was successful for the most part. I also used a countdown method as well to get students back on track. 

As for my Honors students, I worked on being less helpful for these students and I worked on inquiring them more about the math processes. I found this effective in getting a better picture of what my students understood. I also had a very successful day of reviewing with my students using a PowerPoint with the game Jeopardy. My students loved it. Each table created a team name and the two tables with the most points got candy. This review included everything that my students could expect to see on their exam next week and many of my students showed a need to review more on factoring. I have noticed that many students seem comfortable with quadratics and their transformations as well as drawing other functions like radicals and cubics.

This past week was overall much better, but many students continue to bring in bad behavior and no work ethic into the classroom and their grades display this. It is disheartening and sad. 

Week 14- Teaching Practice

Week 14

In the past week, I found my students as hectic as ever, which worried me, but I also had several students who have started to mature and realize that getting good grades is important. This has been a pleasant surprise and so great to see. These students are now taking notes, asking questions, completing their work, and doing well on assignments because of it. The disciplinary issues continue for now, and the past three weeks I have really hit hard on students with phone calls home, referrals, after school detention, and so on. Hopefully, this will lead to a mutual understanding about classroom expectations. I have talked about the expectations multiple times and many students still lack the discipline to follow these simple rules. 

On a more positive note, I FINALLY used my Promethean Smart Board on Friday, and the lesson went so well! My students were comparing linear relationships when they were presented in different forms. For instance, they would get an equation for one situation and a table for another situation and be asked to compare them and answer questions about them. I invited students to come up to the board and write on there. This allowed students to get more involved and I had students engaged who previously would have never gone up to the board all because of the cool technology and the different colors. 

All in all, this week could have been much worse. My fourth period Algebra 1 class did very well Thursday and I rewarded them with Jolly Ranchers. They were all involved, asking good questions and most of them got a 100% on their exit ticket. This class has struggled so it was a bright spot in my week to see them all do so well.