Another Day Bites the Dust

So today was NOT my day!  All of my seniors, most of my juniors and a quarter of my sophomores were gone today on trips.  I had a two tests and (what I think is going to be fun) an activity planned.  I really didn't think that it was a good idea to move on with so many students absent so I canceled my plans.  But I just feel like talking about the same thing another day is sooo boring for my students.  I tried to catch up those who have been absent and teach others how to use a microscope.  I feel like I am already behind what frameworks I am supposed to cover and that I'm failing my students.  I have certainly put a lot of pressure on myself.  Also, I  found out today that my husband is leaving for Canada for 10 days for a work trip.  Did I mention that I have a 10 month old daughter, full time job and a full time MAT student?!?  Talk about stress!

On a good note, I have scheduled a day to visit a near by school district to observe a biology teacher that is completely AWESOME and I plan on stealing everything I can from her.  And I also received my first "silly band"  from a student.  It is an orange pumpkin.  I, however, thought it was an apple...

New Technique

My Classroom Layout

This weekend I went to my monthly class down in Monticello.  I heard a technique that a fellow student was trying with her class...centers.  That's right, centers.  Just like your local kindergarten teachers are doing.  I thought to myself when I heard this comment that there was NO WAY this would work in my classroom.  After really wanting to try something besides lecturing everyday six times a day for 45 minutes, I came up with how I was going to implement my own centers.

I started by prepping my students two days prior.  I told them what we were going to do, what I expected and how we were going to do it. Today was THE day.  I carefully divided my classes into groups of 3 or 4 students only.  I divided them by their average grade in the class at this point.  I decided to do it this way so I could do remediation with students that need it or give more indepth details/projects/questions to students who were ready to advance.  Some classes had 4 groups but most had 5.

My "centers" included a microscope section where students would look at a prepared slides and draw what they saw in the lab notebook (most of my students have never used a microscope and yes they are in the 10th grade!).  Next, was the reading table for students to read the section we are studying right now.  Third, was a vocabulary table where students picked three vocab words, from the same section, to draw a pictorial representation of the word.  The fourth center was the math group where students worked on basic math skills that they are lacking and desperately hate to work on.  Lastly was my center.  This is where students would have a discussion or mini-lecture with me.

I was terrified to try this.  I was afraid that there would be mass ciaos in the room and I would have wasted a day of instruction.  However, I was pleasantly surprised at how well  my students behaved and how much they got out of today.  More questions were asked about the concepts we are covering and time just flew by.  If this keeps up, we may only have one day of lecture a week!

The First Weeks of School

These first weeks of school have certainly been more difficult than I could have ever imagined.  I have spent every day with my daughter since she was born, and going back to work was not really on my list of things to do.  However, I knew my time had come and that if I was going to get hired at the school in my home town that I needed to get started.

After spending hours of crying, I took my daughter to daycare and walked into my first professional development.  I had not been crying just because I had to take my daughter to daycare, but also because I slammed my finger in the car door!  Shortly after arriving at school, I had to ask to go to the doctor.  I was sure my finger was broken.  After spending 2 hours in the doctors office and a set of x-rays, I was free to go back to school.  Thankfully it was not broken.

I have a love of biology that I desperately want to get across to my students.  Over these last four weeks I have found out that it is going to be much more difficult than I thought it was going to be though.  There is much more paperwork and standardized testing that I have to prepare than I imagined there was going to be.  my students will have SIX practice End of Course exams before they actually get to take it.  These tests are mandatory and I think I am more scared of them than my students.