Well, I've only been in the classroom three weeks and I already have a cold. Germy little fourth graders and their dirty hands and desks and sniffling and sneezing. I'm currently drinking peppermint tea and throwing back Airborne. I think early bedtime is definitely in order tonight.
Today we had our first "Professional Development Day" at M School. The kids got out early (12:00) and we spent the rest of the afternoon in the Library discussing various issues and doing a writing analysis activity. There was also line dancing in the hallway. I kid you not.
Mrs. F, the principal, gave a 30 minute presentation on the importance of learning objectives. There were a lot of grumbles from the teachers... "When am I ever going to find time to write learning objectives? I don't understand why this is necessary. I already teach just fine, I don't need to write objectives." etc. etc. I, however, thought that Mrs. F made some great points in favor of learning objectives, and considering how accomodating and amenable she's been to the faculty, I hope they'll go along with this one. Here were her points: In order to be an effective teacher, learning needs to be "results-oriented." By writing learning objectives, you clearly state where you are going. By having a goal, you can then administer the means to get there, and evaluate when you have arrived.
Earlier this summer we learned the "Teaching for Understanding" framework in our Social Studies Methods class and I really like the way that it is structured. This is along the same lines. Teachers are supposed to write lesson objectives that are specific, observable, measurable, and performance-based in the format of, "You will be able to...." or "Students will be able to...." They avoid verbs that are too vague, unmeasurable, or ambiguous (like appreciate, believe, comprehend, grasp, enjoy, familiarize, learn, like, realize, understand). They are concrete and MEASURABLE. An example: "Students will be able to convert Celsius temperatures to Farenheit." or "Students will be able to identify instances of personification in poetry."
(I know this is pretty typical stuff, but NO ONE at M School is using this format in lesson plans. Mrs. F also wants them to write "higher order questions" but she is leaving that for next PD day. Will be interesting to see how that goes.)
We looked at writing samples in our grade groups (I was with 2, 3, and 4) and talked about strengths and weaknesses and ways to help the kids better develop their writing. This time the focus was specifically on a "movie in your mind" where you take a "watermelon idea" and break it down into a "seed moment" with lots of description, action, thoughts, feelings, etc. The idea is that you take a moment and really streeettcchhh it out. I think that there are a lot of kids in our class who still aren't getting this idea, but Mrs. C brought some good examples with her for PD. One in particular was Ru's... truly amazing work. She did a descriptive and creative story about a rollercoaster ride that was WAY better than anything I could have ever come up with... despite my English major.
In other news, Ra was a real grouch again today. Nothing sweet or nice ever seems to come out of that girl's mouth - all I ever hear are complaints, back-talk, attitude, or just silence. There is really something going on with her - the kid needs counseling, or medication, or something, and its SO hard to give her the attention she obviously needs when there are 20 other kids who also need help. And that's with both Mrs. C and me in the room at the same time! I can see how kids "slip through the cracks" - we do what we can to help her, but it never seems like its enough.
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