AuburnChick's Adventures

My brain is all scrambled right now…

What can I say?

It’s Monday.

I had a sub three out of four days last week.

Let’s just say that I walked into a mess…some of it my own doing.

Here are my ramblings from my day.

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Miscellanea #1:

Last week, I had assigned a Story Elements summative project.

For you non-teacher folks, that means that this assignment counted as a test grade.

Oh yeah.

I had gone over the instructions.

Everyone understood them.

Or so I thought.

I picked up the projects on Friday after school and graded them this weekend.

It was ugly.

Oh my, but as I went through each class’s work, I realized that my students had not understood things nearly as well as I had thought.

So, I spent part of the weekend developing a simpler checklist for the kids to use.

Don’t ask me why I had not thought of this before.

Call it overload.

I also had provided feedback on the rubrics that were on the back of the original instructions so that each student could see where on the grading scale their projects fell.

We’re visual people, don’t you know, and there’s nothing like a pink highlighter to alert you to areas that you need to work on.

I saw my students faces relax as I apologized for my mistakes, and I assured them that I would walk them through the re-do.

Intensive reading kids need a lot of reassurance, you see.  Often, they are beaten down by poor self images and people who’ve given up on them and left them to their own devices.

I’m determined to show them that they CAN succeed.

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Miscellanea #2:

Although I sound nice, I’m not.

At least, I wasn’t today.

I’m really tightening the reins.  I’m working very hard to nip misbehavior in the bud.  I’m determined that my students will follow procedures, and if not, then they will incur natural consequences.

My kids are not enjoying this new, tougher side of me.

They’re starting to say things like, “Man, Ms. AuburnChick. Everything in this class has a procedure.”

Uh huh.

Oh, and don’t try to bring discipline forms back to school unsigned.  It’s just not going to fly with me anymore.

Call me mean.

Call me a teacher who cares.

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Miscellanea #3:

My 4th period class won the contest for good behavior.  My substitute told me that they were excellent and even tagged this class as the best.

I didn’t tell them at first, though.

My friend, Barb, did me the huge favor of running out to Little Caesar’s during lunch.  She also picked up a couple of two-liter drinks…even getting them on sale.  Me thinks I’m rubbing off on her a bit.  😉

She came into my room as my students were finishing their independent reading, and the looks on their faces was completely worth the minimal effort it had taken to provide this incentive.

It was a lot of fun teaching them while they enjoyed food and drink.

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Miscellanea #4

The reading teachers have been sharing websites with each other.  I thought I’d pass along a few for you.

Reading Comprehension/Context Clues Worksheets – Oh my, but this is a wonderful site!!  I’m going to use a lot of these as sponge activities (i.e. stuff to do when students finish assignments).

Reading/Language Arts Lesson Plans – Another terrific website with lots of pre and post-tests!

Story Elements Video – Oh my, but this is the cutest thing ever and a good summary of the story elements!

Story Elements Interactive Site – This is a cute little site that helps students learn in an interactive manner.

VocabAhead – This site has great videos and is used by some of our reading teachers to introduce vocabulary words.

Filed under: Teaching | Tagged: story elements, teaching |