Things are definitely improving at Gilbert Junior High. I love it there. I cannot get enough of the students and the math. Yeah, I am a math dork. I'm even reading a book called "Kiss My Math". It is so awesome. Anyway, like I said I did start to teach this week. It was very scary but a lot of fun. I couldn't have a better teacher or group of kids to work with. I started with seventh period so that way I can watch all day and then go on to teach. That was only one reason: seventh period is the best class out of all of them. Here is a breakdown of my awesome week!Monday: This was my favorite because I got the day off. Yep, being a teacher pays off because you get MLK day off.
Tuesday: On Tuesday we did scale drawings. Essentially we went around the world. We had maps in front of us and we found the distance between two cities using a ruler and the scales on the map. Once everyone in the class understood we played for homework passes. They really enjoyed that. Teaching this lesson was a lot of fun but I was nervous and I felt it. I talked really fast... yeah I need to slow down. (In third period we watched the inauguration, it was awesome because we had a period to watch TV).
Wednesday: First, I had an all staff meeting. I had to be to "work" a lot earlier than normal. (Okay, half an hour isn't a lot, but it makes a difference). It did get boring at one point in time but it was good for me to go. Besides, they had food, who would pass up free food? We did scale drawings of ourselves. We took measuring tapes and measured our heads, bodies, legs, and wingspan. They then had to draw what they looked like using those measurements on a paper. We used the scale of 1 inch on the paper equaled 10 inches on ourselves. SOOO if my head was 10 inches, it would be one inch on the paper. The students had a lot of fun and so did I. My only problem was that while I was giving instructions I (you guessed it) talked to fast. I did find out that my strength was that I talk in the perfect pitch, I'm not too loud or too quiet.
Thursday: We had a review day because Friday was a day for the big chapter seven test. We brought out the whiteboards and I would have them work out some problems on those. After doing that for about half an hour we had a quick drawing contest. For some reason they have to draw and telling them we would do something like that keeps them motivated to do math for awhile. Anyway, I had my class draw a penguin. They all did an awesome job drawing my favorite animal. They were very cute!
Friday: We had a big test on chapter 7 (ratios and proportions)! It was worth 100 points (scary, I know) but most of the students did well. I would grade as they turned in their test and then did the extra credit. Nothing too exciting happened. Oh! I had to go to "work" early because of an AVID meeting. My teacher is an AVID teacher and I am a tutor. So, I went just to get more information (even though I didn't have to). I figure that the more I learn about AVID and work with it, the more qualifications I am given.
Like I said, this week was a lot better. I am having a hard time teaching the class and I think I know why I've never taught math lessons before. I've done one, maybe two, the whole time that I have been in my teaching programs. Pathetic, but true. I'm still getting used to the fact that math isn't always as easy to teach as the other subjects. That is perfectly okay, I'm up for the challenge. Next week will be a more normal week because I'll be doing normal lectures and note taking. I am only going to take over seventh period and then maybe after another week of just them I'll either do second or fifth (I haven't decided). Well, I'm off to go write a lesson plan for Monday (my advisor is coming in to evaluate me). See you next week for another post about my life as a student teacher.
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