McKenzie’s Blog

Well, here I am, back to blog on another week at Thurston High School. Not much to say this week. Things are going very well. I had my first observation and I got some really good feedback, so that made me happy. I am finishing up a unit on taxes…yuck! I was very nervous about this unit, because it is definately my weakest area, but so far so good. I have tried to keep it as interesting as possible and mix up lecture with hands on with internet activities. I mean its taxes…this is dry stuff here people. The students are picking it up very well though, so yay there. I am anxious to get into my worksample unit on money management later this week because I have some fun things planned there.

I am also excited to teach Excel to my Computer Apps class. They are sick of Word. We just finished learning how to research on the internet and write a short research paper on a topic of their choice. I was impressed with how much they actually listened to me, since that class seems to not pay much attention to my helpful tips unless I make them turn off their computers and get out note paper. I will say Im still struggling in there to teach to all of the students individual levels. Some students get their work done in a flash and others struggle. I try to give the competent students extension activities, but they have no interest in doing what seems like extra work. My mentor teacher says this problem is common in a class like Computer Apps or Keyboarding and he still struggles with trying to challenge everyone to their best abilites. That makes me feel better that its not just a me thing, or a rookie thing.

One student was so cute though. He knows a lot of computer terminolgy and asked me if he could get an advanced list of computer vocab. I was so excited. I have him a list of words my mentor teacher uses in his Computer Apps 2 class and asked the student to cross out the words he already knew. He now takes an extended test with his own list of words in addition to the words the other students are tested on. It doesn’t count for any extra credit, but he really likes it and consequently makes me feel really great, like I am actually teaching him something new. I was just thrilled he wanted to take on the extra task. I don’t see a lot of students these days taking extra steps to improve their own educations beyond what is required.

All in all i am a happy camper right now. I’m still learning new lessons every day and becoming a better teacher with every mistake as well as each achievement. Yay teaching!

Ok, so I promised my students I would have their grades updated on Monday…yikes! It looks a paper tornado has overtaken my living room, but no, its just all of the papers I am grading (and all the while I’m wondering why I assigned so much work in the first place…ha ha). Man, this will be a billion times easier when I have my own classroom and file cabinets and so on… I am having such a hard time staying organized while constantly on the move and never really having my own space.

I have learned first and foremost I need a better system for taking role, marking absences and coordinating them with the things I handed out. I am going through WAY too much paper because students see others get papers back and say “Oh Miss Smith, I didn’t get that one,” when they probably did, but I didn’t keep good enough track. And I needed to document better the students who were transferring in and out of class at the beginning of the term so I know which kids need not be responsible for assignments they weren’t even in my class for at the time.

I am learning SOOOOO much right now (I could write a book…and kinda am…well a journal for myself at least). I am just so very thankful that I have a fantastic mentor who is there to answer any and all of my questions while giving me the space to make mistakes and learn.

I will be starting my 2 week unit for my work sample this week, so I am excited to get that taken care of.

I feel like I am constantly swimming to stay afloat. I’m not drowning, which is good, but i am not floating peacefully on the surface either. I was at a dance coaches conference all weekend and will be taking my ORELA next weekend (wish me luck please ) Its all so much and I feel so busy. At the same time, I feel confident I can do it. Yay! I also feel so lucky to have the students I do. While they talk quite a bit (yeah, they are getting a seating chart of my choosing this week, since the one they chose for themselves last week isn’t working out so well…and I knew it wouldn’t but they can’t say I didn’t give them a chance to prove to me they could pick their own seats)…anyways, where was I…oh yes, they talk a lot, but on the whole they are pretty good kids who I feel are making an effort to do well and learn the material. I teach in a computer lab (which is a huge classroom management issue in and of itself) so I have started giving them “free time Friday” where they can have free time on the computers if they are quiet all week. The more disruptive they are, the less time they get. This is working pretty well. I hate resorting to bribery, but lets face it, it works

Well, that’s all for this week. I know I’ve kind of jumped all over the place with my thought process in this post, but it kind of represents how disorganized I feel right now. Hopefully I can get things in order this week. Good luck to everyone and happy teaching!

Ok, so I administered my first test this week. Yay! I felt good about it (except the time it took to correct them all and give constructive feedback…gee I really hope they read my comments). I gave the students the opportunity to use a page of notes and set their expectations that I am not a fan of multiple choice and/or matching, so they could expect short answer and short essay. They were less than thrilled to hear that, but after the test most students agreed that they felt like they did well and that the test wasn’t bad at all. It turns out that they were right (for the most part). It felt really good to read what they wrote and see how much insight they have into the subject matter. It turns out that most of them have really been paying attention. I was also pleasantly surprised that when I gave free time on Thursday, although a few students chose to surf the internet, most students decided to consolidate their notes or finish up their assignments.

We have been studying career choices, job applications, resumes, cover letters and interviews. A few students were really excited to work on resumes and interviewing especially because they were planning on applying for jobs in the near future. Some students told me they were bored because they have already done resumes in other classes. I tried to give them an additional challenge of finding a job to apply for in the classifieds or online and tailor a new resume and cover letter to that job. I found that most students are lazy and will just do enough to get by. Since my suggestion was not ‘required’ they did not pursue it. It made me a little sad, but then I had to be honest with myself and realize that I probably wouldn’t have done the extra work either. Ah well…makes me think back to our class discussion on motivation last week. I have to do my best to put the info/knowledge out there and encourage the students in hopes that at some point they will make an effort to take it in. I will do all I can and keep on keepin on. Till next time…keep smiling and inspiring my friends.

I am actually beginning my student teaching experience tomorrow, and to be completely honest, I am very nervous (as I am sure many of us are). I think that if I were teaching math I might be feeling a bit more confident, however, this fall I am teaching business classes (Personal Finance and Computer Applications) and am a little bit out of my comfort zone. This is mainly because I have been given so much freedom by my mentor teacher. On one hand it is awesome because he is allowing me to do whatever I want, in whatever order I want, as long as I cover a certain few topics. This sounds very cool and I was extremely excited at first.  When I started planning, however, I realized that I wished I had a little bit more structure to work within so I could make sure to cover all the appropriate material in the appropriate time frame. I think I am most nervous about not being able to predict how much material I will be able to cover with the students in a 70 minute class period. After a week, I should get a good idea of how things can go for the rest of the trimester, so my goal is to try and be as over prepared as possible to make sure that I have more than enough material.

Hopefully my next post will have more content when I finally have experiences with the students to reflect on. I have been a high school dance team coach for 12 years now, so I have plenty of experience working with high school age students. Coaching, however, is very different in that the students I work with generally want to be at practice and make an effort to work as a team toward a common goal. I know that students in school do not always want to be in class and I will have to make more of an effort to get them involved with the material. Luckily, the classes I am teaching have direct real world relevance, so it shouldn’t be difficult to help them understand why they need to know the information. I hope to make things fun and interesting so that the students enjoy the class and don’t feel like it is a chore.

Peer Review

McKenzie:
 
I have just finishing taking a math road trip, escorted around the country by your Google Earth project. I like the general concept – looking at some interesting landmarks around the United States. Your use of photos within the pop-up box of your thumbtacks is excellent, and a great way to overcome the major weakness of Google Earth, which is limited 3D capabilities. I enjoyed working on the math problems that were presented at each stop along the way. This was an excellent way to review some very important geometric concepts. Depending on the age and proficiency of the students that will be using the project, you might consider adding the needed formulas to each pop-up, or perhaps give them a link to a website where they can find the appropriate formulas. Overall, very enjoyable. Nice work!
 
Brian H.

 Project Description

I was frustrated with this assignment at first as I struggled to come up with a use for Google Earth in the mathematics classroom. With some help from Jen Butler, I settled on an idea that I am very excited about now. I am actually going to be using the math road trip I created in my practicum as a review for the post-test I will be giving on the last day. I will be covering perimeter, area and scale of polygons and area and circumference of circles in my lessons. I found locations and structures across the country that I could work into equations to review the content of the lessons. I will be presenting on a smart board and as we stop at each location, there will be a fun fact (which lends itself to cross curricular learning) and a story problem. The students will work through each problem using the equations I will have taught them in earlier lessons. There is also a picture of each structure we are visiting and a link to the internet where students can learn more about it. The benchmarks this project will cover are 7.3.5 Find and justify relationships among the formulas for areas of different polygons when determining surface area, and 7.3.3 Solve problems involving areas and circumferences of circles.

Peer Review 

McKenzie: Thank you for sharing your Comic Life project with me. Let me just start by saying “Wow”, I am so impressed with how it turned out. Your introduction was excellent….you mentioned the four key components of the marketing mix and set the tone for the rest of the presentation. The content of each page is superior. You have mixed in highly appropriate pictures with just enough text to understand exactly what the message is supposed to be. Text is clear and concise, and the presentation progresses in a logical order. The conclusion is fantastic, it really drives home the point that if you want to get your product in the hands of your customers, you had better pay attention to the four P’s. All of your color and font choices fit the overall presentation very well. Overall this is a fantastic comic book. I truly believe that if you used this in a high school classroom, the students would be enthusiastic about learning. Very well done  

Brian H 

Project Description 

This project can be used in a high school business class when introducing the four Ps of the marketing mix (product, price, place and promotion). I am currently observing in a middle school mathematics classroom, but will be doing my student teaching in the fall in a high school business classroom. I felt that for this particular assignment, to utilize visual representation, choosing a topic in marketing was most logical. I attempted to minimize text and to choose images that represent each area of the marketing mix in detail. I could print the comic book pages out for the students as a memorable visual illustration of the information I am teaching. As they attempt to recall the information for use in future lessons or tests, they can recall the comic book pages to stimulate their memory and remember the data. 

Since there are no benchmarks in a career related learning subject such as business, I referred to the Oregon Skill Set for an appropriate standard for the project. This project was designed to meet the Industry-Based Knowledge and Skill MKZ01.01: Integrate social-studies skills into marketing, sales and service to better understand customers and the economic environment in which they function. 

Assimilation and/or accommodation 

I have used Power Point in the past, so I was interested in exploring something new. The Comic Life program is very new to me so this assignment was very much cognitive accommodation. I did experience some assimilation in that I have familiarity with layout and design. I got to experiment with those elements in a completely new context with the comic program. I spent a lot of time getting acquainted with the program and its features. I experimented with changing the pictures to look more comic-like, adjusting colors, adding text bubbles and titling. I used my prior knowledge of color schemes, contrast and organization to make the pages interesting, yet easy to follow. I gathered pictures from the internet and arranged them to best describe the key points of my lesson. 

I really enjoyed exploring this new program and was very happy with the result. I would actually love to spend more time getting to know more of what the program can do. I think it would be a very interesting way to represent lessons from time to time and would definitely capture the students attention and interest.

Peer Review 

McKenzie:

Thank you for sharing your Inspiration Diagram with me. Structurally, the diagram has an excellent layout and the relationship between objects is very clear.  I like the way you are reviewing the formulas for surface area and then scaffolding into volume calculations. The structure is very easy to understand. You might try to incorporate the volume formulas at the bottom of the diagram as well. I love the minimal use of text, and the colors are effectively used. I love the real world examples that you display in your photos. Perhaps you might consider changing the backgrounds on your photos so that they all utilize the same color. The top bubble in the diagram probably needs to be enlarged because it is text-wrapping on my computer.  Additionally, the labels on your real objects (cone, cylinder, etc) should probably be a couple of fonts larger. All in all, I think it looks great and it is very easy to understand. Nice work.

Brian 

Project Description

This project can be used as a middle school pre-algebra level lesson in calculating volume. The inclusion of real objects rather than simply using diagram drawings ties real life in with math in an attempt to grab the students’ attention. I would hope to use the diagram to review the calculations of areas of shapes, use those calculations to determine volume and show how the calculations of the volumes of the 5 shapes are related to one another. I can print the diagram out for the students to keep as a guide in their notebooks. I really enjoyed the two videos I have hyperlinked in the diagram. They are both demonstrations exemplifying the ratio of the volume of a quadrilateral prism to a pyramid and a cylinder to a cone. I think they can really help the students grasp the concept of why a pyramid and cylinder are 1/3 of the other shapes with the same base area. This project is designed to meet benchmark 8.3 Geometry and Measurement: Analyze two- and three-dimensional spaces and figures by using distance and angle.

Mic check 1..2..3. Is this thing on?