Week 10

March 16, 2011

This week has been flying by! On Monday and Tuesday we did conferencing with the students to prepare for their test. We did this before the last exam as well. The students had to prepare a composition before class and they brought it up to John and I and we made corrections. The students then had to correct their errors and continue bringing up their essay to us until they got the “stamp of approval”. This is a great learning process for the students because they will write a similar composition for the test and this time around they have feedback and they have to search for the corrections.

After being in the classroom for more time, (10 weeks, ah!) I have noticed how much other “things” teachers must squeeze into their days minus just their lessons and teaching their lessons. I am constantly writing passes for students to make up work, rewriting quizzes, planning ahead, finding pencils for students who don’t have one (do they ever remember?!), standing in the halls between passing periods, taking the attendance on the computer during class/changing the attendance when students come late with a pass, running to the copy machine, finding dry erase markers that work, and the list goes on. There are so many “little” things that occupy time and I am finally getting to the point where they are coming more naturally and I don’t have to think about it all as much. So, that is a relief!

March 18, 2011

Yesterday I reviewed with my students and then they tested on the most recent material, all of which I had taught them on my own. I was kind of nervous to see how the students would do compared to past scores. I am still working on grading the essay section of the test and will have them done for Monday. I am so thankful that my CT is helping me with grading. We have a lot of assessment this week besides the test, so he is definitely a blessing.

Today the students completed the formative for the third quarter. This assignment is a quick check to see if students are at where they should be for Spanish II. All Spanish II students took this assessment, which asked the students to write five sentences using the preterit tense. I also explained the project for semester two. We then had to swap out our textbooks and change them for the new books. We had about twenty minutes to begin working with the new vocabulary for my section of the LAMP project. I have been wanting to rearrange the seating chart and desk arrangement, so after school today I moved the desks into “pods”. I assigned the students to their new seats and tried to mix up the order and have student sit by different people than normal. We will see next week how the new seats go and how/if it changes the classroom atmosphere.

We have two weeks left until spring break and then after break I really only have three more weeks left of student teaching. It is going by so quickly!