Week 6

A highlight of the past week would be that my avid kids played two truths and a lie and I knew all but two of the students. I like the feeling that I know the young people that I am teaching. It was also fun to see how much they knew about me as well.

Something that happened that made me think a little differently about kids is that sometimes the fight is worth it and sometimes it is not. Then there comes a line when you have to call the student out every single time. The little things are easily handled by hand motions or raised eyebrows and other things you have to say how it makes you feel. I realized the more open on how their behavior makes you feel and how you would like to work on changing that with them the better your silent cues are followed later on. I had a student I took out of the classroom during a lecture and explained that I understood he listened a lot better when playing with some things in the student’s hands but when you are making noise with that instrument/ or disturbing others from learning that the student needed to respect them and me when we ask them to stop. We show respect by asking politely and we need respect in return. I then gave the student options that would work instead.

One practice that I will adopt when I teach a lesson is making a hash mark on the board representing 10 seconds of the students’ passing time when the whole class is not coming back together after I have asked. It worked like magic and was a fast easy way to get students to realize that they need to settle down after a task.

There were a couple things I found perplexing this week. The first was the brain to body function process. One kid just ran (literally) from the back of the room into this kid at the front and drove him into the smart board. When asked why the student said he didn’t know and from the look on his face I believe that answer. The second was when I was grading papers and one of the more advanced students did not do good on a test but when in class could explain the process extremely well.