Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Fun with Wordle
A fellow teacher told me about a website called Wordle.net that creates word art from a chunk of text. The size of each word increases in proportion to the frequency of the word's appearance. I am planning on using this in my class to create Wordles for each class. I will put in all the student's names and ask them to choose three words that describe themselves. I am planning on posting the word art on our class website, as well as printing it and hanging them in the classroom. This is part of our class culture building we are doing this week.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Why teacher blogs are never updated...
I started this blog in part to chronicle my adventures as a new teacher, and I know that when I was considering undertaking a career change into teaching, I was interesting in reading about other people's teaching experiences. What I found then was that most of the "I'm a new teacher" blogs were neglected and rarely updated. I suspected the same might happen to my own attempt, and it did.
So I guess I am long overdue for an update. Today was the end of second quarter! So I have officially made it half way through my first year. I have a million crazy stories, I have learned so much, I have cried (a lot) and laughed (a lot) and get no sleep and I love it (usually) and I hate it (sometimes).
Just as I thought things were settling down a bit for me (I have made a lot of progress in building relationships with my students, I am more organized and efficient, basically getting into the groove of things), I found out today that when I come to school on Tuesday, my world will be upside down. Let me explain.
I have been teaching 7th grade math all year to the same groups of students. Three of my four classes are co-taught, that is myself and a Special Education teacher both teach the class which consists of a mix of general education students and students with special needs. (I should write a lot more on this later...) Math is an all year course, so usually a teacher has the same students each quarter and semester. Our school is making some adjustments to our staffing, we just hired a new math teacher (which is a good thing!). And the admin team decided to play a little musical chairs with a few of the teachers. The new teacher is taking my place , I am switching to another teacher's class, and that teacher is taking yet another vacancy with all new students.
I am sad about leaving just when I felt like I was making progress, and apprehensive about starting over with all new kids. But I am excited that I will now be teaching two classes of gifted students! I am also nervous about now having to prepare lessons for 3 different classes each day. I used to only teach Pre-Algebra. Now, I teach 3 different classes: pre-algebra, ADA, and Algebra I. So, it is going to a lot of work. Luckily I have a wonderful network of teachers at my school who are willing and able to help me by sharing their resources with me. The other nice thing about this is that the 2 groups of gifted students are very well behaved, so classroom management won't be as big of a struggle.
I am also getting a fresh start to build my classroom culture from scratch. I can learn from past mistakes and try to get a better handle on things from day 1. The first few days, I am supposed to use as getting-to-know you days, establish my rules and procedures, etc. Just like you do on the first day of school. I am going to try to share some of my plans and ideas over the next few days.
So I guess I am long overdue for an update. Today was the end of second quarter! So I have officially made it half way through my first year. I have a million crazy stories, I have learned so much, I have cried (a lot) and laughed (a lot) and get no sleep and I love it (usually) and I hate it (sometimes).
Just as I thought things were settling down a bit for me (I have made a lot of progress in building relationships with my students, I am more organized and efficient, basically getting into the groove of things), I found out today that when I come to school on Tuesday, my world will be upside down. Let me explain.
I have been teaching 7th grade math all year to the same groups of students. Three of my four classes are co-taught, that is myself and a Special Education teacher both teach the class which consists of a mix of general education students and students with special needs. (I should write a lot more on this later...) Math is an all year course, so usually a teacher has the same students each quarter and semester. Our school is making some adjustments to our staffing, we just hired a new math teacher (which is a good thing!). And the admin team decided to play a little musical chairs with a few of the teachers. The new teacher is taking my place , I am switching to another teacher's class, and that teacher is taking yet another vacancy with all new students.
I am sad about leaving just when I felt like I was making progress, and apprehensive about starting over with all new kids. But I am excited that I will now be teaching two classes of gifted students! I am also nervous about now having to prepare lessons for 3 different classes each day. I used to only teach Pre-Algebra. Now, I teach 3 different classes: pre-algebra, ADA, and Algebra I. So, it is going to a lot of work. Luckily I have a wonderful network of teachers at my school who are willing and able to help me by sharing their resources with me. The other nice thing about this is that the 2 groups of gifted students are very well behaved, so classroom management won't be as big of a struggle.
I am also getting a fresh start to build my classroom culture from scratch. I can learn from past mistakes and try to get a better handle on things from day 1. The first few days, I am supposed to use as getting-to-know you days, establish my rules and procedures, etc. Just like you do on the first day of school. I am going to try to share some of my plans and ideas over the next few days.
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