Monthly Archives: February 2014

Front-loading = My Homework

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Based on the comments my FA and SA made, I think I may have to front-load my grade 8 students a lot more than I expected. This is definitely the homework I need to learn for the remaining few weeks.

1. Mock Trial
It was my first time to organize a mock trial. I was setting the mock trial up as a vehicle to get students think in the perspective of the characters. It was also a way for them to think about this question: could violence ever be justified?
I allowed my students to pick their roles, so that they would be more eager to participate. However, from this activity, I knew that it might be a better idea for me to assign their roles. There were a certain boys who could never be grouped together because if they were in the same group, there would be chaos. I really need to come up with some creative ways to group the students. It is a small class, so there are not many varieties. Seeing how the students were more comfortable when they were sitting on the floor, I really had the desire to just move all the chairs and desks away. However, I could only change the classroom setting once in a while. Anyway, let’s get back to the mock trial. I did not really provide my students a whole lot of information about the mock trial. I gave them a script to begin the trial and told them the responsibilities of their roles. I did not really prep the students on how to object or how to ask appropriate questions. And both of my SA and FA thought I could have done that, so the trial would run a lot smoother. Nonetheless, considering it as my first “trial”, I thought I did a good job. I thought the discussion went fairly well.

2. Talk Show
I had my students discussed some of the questions from chapter 10, 11 and 12 in a more interesting way. I divided them into groups, and gave them some guiding questions to help them to stay on task. The objective was to get students think about the questions and presented them in an entertaining way for their fellow classmates. I got the idea of a talk show from one of the ubc classes I had. I did not really know how to execute it when I read the brief description from the textbook. And yet, I thought it was a great idea to try it when my FA was coming in to observe. As a result, the lesson was not as fantastic as I imagined it to be. I would not say it was a total failure because some students could still accomplish the task. It was just that I did not give them clear guidance as to how I wanted the talk show to be like. Again, I did not front-load my students enough, which was the critique I got from both of my SA and FA. On my part, I could have done more research on it, so that I knew how other teachers had executed it before I tried.

That day was the first day I cried because of the BEd program. I tried very hard not to cry, but it was difficult. Tears just kept sliding across my cheek. However, I would not give up that easily. I will rebound from this to tackle the lack of front-loading problem. For the following week, I am going to front load my students as much as possible to get them prepare for writing a persuasive paper. Let’s see if I get accomplish this another trial of my teaching journey.

Bonding with the Kids

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Today was by far the greatest moment of my teacher’s life.

I organized some activities for my Hums 8 students to do. The activities were just aids to help them imagine themselves in the character’s situation. After the activities, we had a little discussion about the activity. We talked about the impact of inequality, especially focusing on the stratification of social class. It was interesting how the discussion somehow moved to a direction that I did not intend. It showed that students were the driving force of the discussion. We talked about bullying. It was one of the big themes in The Outsiders, and it was an important issue to discuss. Therefore, I did not stop students from talking. They were so excited to respond. They were talking about how bullying could not really be stopped. I asked them if telling an adult would help the situation. Many of the students surprisingly told me that teachers did not care. I was surprised by the response. I did not understand. Therefore, I asked why they said teachers did not care if someone got bullied. Apparently, in another class, they tried to complain to a teacher about a bully. However, the teacher did not take any action. The teacher might have told the student to stop; nonetheless, no further action had been taken. It was sad to hear. It was even more upsetting to hear that the students did not think teachers would do anything against bullying. I was happy that they were so willingly and openly to tell me about it. I was not sure how I could help. I could only tell them that I would not allow such thing in my class.

I was also happy that the discussion happened in my quieter class instead of the louder one. I felt like I connected with them more because of the discussion. I felt we bonded after this. Hopefully this would last. I want to know more about them. I want them to know that I will be here for them if they need me. It was also heartwarming that the kid who usually behaved poorly in my class said something like it was mean to ask when miss lui would leave since I told them we would have a pot-luck before I go. I did not expect him to say something like that. Even though that did not seem to mean much, I was happy to hear him say that. Ahhhh kids.

In my last block, we played a little game before I would take over the class. It was fun. The students would ask me join their group. They even suggested to name the group after me. One student was funny. He told me that we were friends, so I needed to tell him what was “hula-chuan”(hula-hoop) in English. Another student said that the would sit over here because I was sitting at this particular table. I just hope once I take over the class, they would not be hating me for giving them assignments. Right now we are on good terms, but who knows….After a month or so, they may be complaining how boring my class is. 😛 I had a good laugh with them though because they were not afraid to be goofy. They are just adorable kids. I think I am in love…in love with my job, with my students.

Reflection of the second week

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The remaining three school days of the week past rather quickly.

On Wednesday, we wrote police reports and news articles based on an incident in the novel. The purpose of the activity was to get students think in another perspective. I divided the first class into 2 and gave them different assignments: one group with police reports and the other group with news template. However, they quickly finished the assigned tasks. The only thing I could do was to encourage them to do the other assignment that they did not do. After they were done with both tasks, they could either read the next chapter or start writing their journal entries.  I decided to change the format for the second class because of the speediness that the previous class demonstrated. I asked the whole second class to be objective and constructed a police report. In this case, they were only noting down what was said in the novel. After that, I randomly distributed the completed police report to another group. The class needed to create a news according to the assigned police report. In this case, I told the class that they might exaggerate some of the information that was missing from the police report to make it more entertaining because that was what some news reporters do. I think the second class had more fun. The benefit of having back-to-back classes is allowing me to quickly adjust my lesson  if something does not work with the first class. 🙂

On Thursday, we discussed the relationship between the protagonist, Ponyboy and his brothers, Darry and Sodapop. Before that, I asked the two classes to summarize chapter 3 for me. However, it was a lot harder for the quieter class to respond. There were only 2 students who might “dare” to answer. There are a few students who have already finished the novel. Also, most of them did read the chapter because their journal entries clearly indicated that. Therefore, I wondered why they did not really speak in class. My SA pointed out to me that I might have to address them by names in order to get a response out of them. I was not sure if that was a good idea. When I was a student, I disliked teacher called out particular student to answer a question. Anyways, after summarizing, the class needed to come up with quotes that described the relationships. Then the class wrote a letter in the perspective of Sodapop or Darry to Ponyboy. I photocopied some pretty letter papers for them, and I think some students really liked it.

On Friday, we began the class by going over the top 5 chapter titles that the students created. In order to encourage them to be more creative, the top 5 students were given some privileges, such as prizes or given the chance to pick something. For example, we would be doing a mock trial on Monday, so the students who created better and more creative titles got to pick their roles first. I addressed the students by names to get them tell me which roles they wanted to play. The quieter class started to speak up more in class, which was a nice improvement. It was nice to see both classes seemed to be excited for the mock trial. They asked a lot of questions about the mock trial. Originally I would show a clip of a mock trial to let students experience what it would look like. However, I forgot my adaptor and no projector was available. I needed to give them a simple definition to get them understand. I also went through the agenda to hope that they recognized what we would be doing. Hopefully on Monday, the mock trial will run smoothly. I provided the classes with some tips and script on how to conduct a mock trial. I gave them time to prepare for their speech and discussion, so everyone would be on the same page. I also got the louder class to quiet down by raising my hand. It will be nice if this trick can last. 😛

This week was quite chaotic.
There was a student telling me he would be gone for 4 weeks. I needed to print out all the worksheets and assignment guidelines for him to finish. Since he would not be participating in the trial on Monday ,I asked him to read through them during group discussion. Based on the questions he asked, I needed to modify some of the worksheets. I forgot to put down the instructions on some of them because they would be class work.
I also had a discussion with another ESL teacher to talk about a particular student’s learning progress. She provided me with some worksheets that she did with that student. The teacher also invited me to observe the class that many of my ESL students from the Humanities 8 class were present. It was neat to see them in a different class environment. They were a lot more active in the ESL class. I guess they were intimidated by the “regular” students. They probably need some encouragement and chances in class to show that they can do the same thing like the other kids in class. I provided some of the “modified” worksheets for a few ESL students because they were struggling with the journal entries. I am not sure if that is fair; however, the main purpose of the entries is to  assess if students understand each chapter. I only provide them with some guiding questions and ask them to elaborate and provide some details about their opinions. I think very soon I may have to talk to a few of the ESL students ho have not been able to hand in their assignments in a row. I will have to address them as soon as possible.

A Mind Filled with Ideas after Pro-D

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Today was not my first time to go to a conference on Professional Development Day. However, it was my first time to go with so many “coworkers”, other teachers from the same school.  This morning session was hold by Tom Shimmer. It was a great session on assessment. I think it was quite helpful for us to really think about how we would assess our students: what should be assessed formatively and summatively. Right now I feel like I am on the right track; thanks to UBC’s assessment course. I also learned that it might be a good idea to not give 0s. Some students may just need the extra time to complete the assignments; however, it does not mean that they do not understand. They just need more time than other students to digest the information. Originally during that section, I was having a question in my mind about fairness. And yet, when I think about it now, I think it is still fair. Students can take the time to do their assignments and I will grade them based on the content. At the same time, I will set up a deadline. Students who complete the assignments on time will have high grades on work habit; meanwhile, students who need to take longer may have to come to finish their work during lunch time or after school. Shimmer pointed out something that I thought was very true: teachers need to react to a situation immediately rather than letting students take advantage of the no-0 system. We will have to be proactive.

After that, another session focused on inquiry and argument. The speaker was encouraging teachers to shape their unit based on a general guiding question. Everything that students are going to do in that unit will be revolving around the question and helping students to develop skills and knowledge that allow them to answer it. I thought this workshop was really helpful because he gave me a lot of ideas for the final project that I would give to my students and some creative activities that I would do to prepare my students for writing a persuasive essay. I think the way that he scaffolded students to form arguments was so interesting. He got students to critically think about the process of an argument. For example, students needed to imagine themselves as detective to solve a mystery case. They needed to provide support as to why they thought it was just an accident but not a murder. Hopefully I will be able to apply the things that I have learned from the workshops to my classes. 🙂

Challenges Come Day after Day

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My third and fourth days were quite smooth.

I made a seating plan for the quieter class. I thought separating the student with behavioural issue from the boys might be a good idea because I did not want them to feed off one another. My SA pointed out that him sitting with the boys might have made the scenario on Tuesday. Therefore, I created the plan to get him to work with other students who I considered as brighter and more mature. Hopefully they would be able to influence him to be a student like them. I do have mixed feeling on this “trouble-maker”. He is not the typical bad kid who just slacks off. He is actually bright and has potential to be academically successful. I just need to find the right channel to communicate with him. The points that he made on Tuesday were actually critical, and they helped me to reflect on my practice a little bit. I am not saying that he was entirely right, but it helped me to think on my feet and to be more sensitive on how I word my responses. Moreover, after knowing his background, I cannot help but develop sympathy for him. His purpose was to seek attention from his peers, and he did not really care if the attention was negative. He just wanted it. I did not help the situation by addressing him to provide this spotlight on him. Anyway, I think the seating plan works for now. I saw them trying to collaborate with one another. Interestingly, after creating the class rules and agreeing upon them, I think he is much more well behaved.

The third class was actually about outcast and gang. I spun it a little to touch on the bullying aspect and asked the class to set up some rules for everyone to follow. During this time, the boys told me they actually found the trouble-maker annoying, and they did not want him in the class. It came as a surprise because I thought he would at least get along with the boys. Therefore, the boys’ class rules were mainly targeting him. I asked them to think about including everyone rather than focusing on excluding him. We as a class should help one another. Then I had each group reading out loud the rules they came up and asked others if they agreed on them. It was a great activity because now they at least could feel they belong to this class and they had the responsibility to construct a good class too. Collaboration was key! 🙂

I really like the idea of group work and collaboration. Therefore, the fourth class was mainly about creating a skit about violence. I asked students to reflect on the cause and consequence of violence. Beforehand, I asked them if violence could be justifiable depending on the situation and what type of violence was acceptable. It created a good discussion in both classes, and I was happy to see that. Then, the students were put into groups to work on their skits. Some of the skits were quite imaginative. It was nice to see the students engage in the activities and everyone was participating in them. During the break, my SA gave me some suggestions on how to make it better such as giving them less preparation time and having the students provide alternative solutions. She also asked how I graded the students based on the skits. I told her that I did not. She told me that I might want to, so they would be more serious about their skits. The students would not be laughing while they were acting. I did not say anything to that and I did not assign any grades for my second class. I just thought skit was a fun way for students to learn and to show that they have learned the materials. I would see it as a summative assessment and did not see any purpose of assigning a grade to it.

I tried to implement the two suggestions to the second class. It worked well. One other  thing she suggested me to work on was the noise level. The students were too excited to work on the skit, so they were being loud. I may have to think of a strategy to address it. Asking them to calm down within 5-second-countdown?! Hm…

After school, we had a workshop on BCESIS, which was helpful. We knew we could find many information on that software. That was how I discovered a student with learning disability in my Hums 8…and my SA did not tell me about her? I could have asked. I guess it just slipped my mind. Now I need to prepare some modified worksheets for her. I was going to talk to this student because she did not hand in any of the assignments. I told her to see me after class, and she almost walked out of my room. If I did not call after her, I was pretty sure she would have just gone to another class. I asked her why she did not hand in her homework. She told me, “I am an ESL student.” I thought to myself, “nice try!” I remember I used similar strategy to have teachers be more sympathetic, so she would grade me easily. I told her that if she had trouble, she could have talked to me. She then added that she had a Special needs block and she could not write down her thoughts. I told her that it would be unfair to other students if you did not do the work. I suggested she could may be verbally summarize the chapter for me to indicated you have read the novel. She nodded. Before finalizing the decision, I wanted to talk to my SA about it. I did, and I asked her about IEP. She was not sure if the student had one. Anyway, somehow I need to modify the lesson for her to make sure she is on task.

My Second Semi-disastrous class

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Today I introduced one of the main themes of The Outsiders, stereotype. The class began with brainstorming how we form first impression of someone. Students came up with several ideas, such as race, fashion, speech, etc. Then I handed out a worksheet for them to reflect on how they judge people. They were so sincere and honest. I saw many of them really thought about the questions, and a few girls were not shy away from circling “I judge others based on appearance”. It was interesting for grade 8s could be so opened to share their thoughts with others. Afterwards, we had a little discussion, which I guided them to think about stereotypes. I prepared seven pictures for the class to go around and to write down the first words which came to their mind. Stereotypes were so ingrained within our society that students had no trouble with this activity. However, that was the nightmare began.

For the morning class, after I asked students to reflect on this activity, a student quickly became defensive and asked me, “are you trying to make us feel bad?” I said no. The purpose of this activity was for us to reflect on how we normally judge and label people and how we can change that. He replied, “it is human nature to judge. We cannot help to form first impressions by stereotyping.” I told him I understood; however, I still wanted all of us to think about making the extra step to strike up a conversation to really know that person instead of judging the book based on its cover. I simplified the heated conversation we had. He asked me how I picked the pictures and how I judged these people based on stereotypes. During this conversation, I could hear some girls just snared and sighed. I felt kind of bad because I felt like this activity was a failure. Now I think about it – yes, it might have been a failure; at least now I know how to deal with this situation anymore. I can just stop conversing with him and ask him to talk to me after class if he has questions about the activity. I thought his “questioning” was quite disruptive to the class environment, and with me engaging in it, the atmosphere became quite intense. At one point, I wanted to cry. I felt attacked. I felt as if my activity was a big mistake. I was glad the class was over, and I could move on from there.

I quickly took a deep breath and had a sip of water to refresh myself. I thought of what I could have changed for the second class, but my mind was still stuck in that scenario. I told myself to calm down because both of my FA and SA would be observing this class. I quickly prepared new sheets for students to write on for the picture activity. The students in this class were a lot more cheerful and energetic which helped me to instantly pick up a new mood. I did everything exactly the same. I also asked students to reflect on the activity, and this time nothing from the previous class happened. The students gave me answers that I wanted, such as taking the extra step to know people around. I was glad. I was thankful for such mature students. One thing I did poorly in this class was the activity at the end. Each student got a slip of paper and they were supposed to write a sentence that did not reflect the stereotype that was imposed on them. For instance, I am Chinese, but I am not good at math. I had trouble explaining the activity because the students kept on asking me questions. At some point, my SA just raised her hand and asked me a question for clarification. Then she further elaborated on it to provide a better understanding. I had mixed feeling on that. I knew part of me was thankful that she explained it for me, but another part of me was disappointed that she did not let me try to handle this on my own. I think at some point I would be able to get the students on the same page. It was the learning curve. I knew I needed to be better at giving out instructions.

My FA and SA were not too harsh on me. My FA was actually surprised I talked about stereotype that early on because that was a sensitive topic. The class could go south very easily. Considering that, I guess both of my classes did go pretty well.

Time flies!

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I cannot believe I am now typing my first day of my long practicum. I have been waiting to start this adventure for so long, and here I am finally! 😀 For the past month, I have been working so hard on my inquiry project and lesson plans that I barely document my experience during my short practicum. Oh well, hopefully this time I am able to keep track of how things go. I cannot wait to share my stories and reflect upon them when I have time.

My first official lesson during my long practicum.

I was so nervous in the morning because…
1. I forgot my adaptor.
2. I tried to figure out how to get the screen set up for probably 5 minutes.
3. I was so scared that I would mispronounce my students’ names.
4. I did not know what to expect from the class.

I spent the beginning 30 minutes of the morning (8:00-8:30) reading over my lesson plan. I created this lesson in December, so it had been a while since then. My SA came into rescue at around 8:20, so she was out hunting the adaptor for me (I asked another teacher for it, but she said that I should be able to get one from my SA). I told my SA that it would be fine to start the lesson without the adaptor, and she insisted to look for it.

Anyway, I started the class by calling out the names. I tried to remember the pronunciation that my SA taught me and from the class observation. Many students were surprised by how accurate I could pronounce. They were like “wow..she got it”. The inside me was smirking. 😉 Since I could not show them the Grease trailer, I went straight into the content – the setting of The Outsiders: 1960s. We discussed the fashion, the interests, pop culture and slang. This class was so energetic that they just kept on giving me ideas. It was great to see they were so excited to answer even though some of them might sound silly. For example, I asked them what was a heater. They were like “a heater?” “a fire-lighter?” “a hot person?”. It was great to see their creative juices working in their brains. Then, we compared all those areas from back then to nowadays. It was interesting how many students thought the pop culture back then was much better than nowadays. They gave interesting answers to explain their thought processes. I wish I had it recorded down, so I would remember some of their lines.

After I finished my whole lesson, there was still around 20 minutes left. I really under-planned. In my mind, I thought that would take a lot longer. This was a good experience since now I know I might have to over plan a little bit to make sure students were really making use of their time to do their assignments. With that great amount of time, I decided to have them write a little introduction and their expectation for this class. It was fascinating to read their thoughts and the way they introduced themselves. It really showed they were still a bunch of innocent kids. They told me about their birthdays and the school/grade they are currently in (duh! of course I know about them). Many of them also indicated how they did not want to have homework or tests. A lot of them mentioned they wanted the class to be fun, which I would try my best to achieve that. One of the quieter students wrote to me and said that I was a kind and loving teacher. She looks forward to “be close to [me]”. My heart instantly melted. That was definitely the highlight of my day.

The second class was about the same. Before the students came in, I wanted to have a sip of my water. Then I found out that I left the water bottle in my dad’s car. Oh well. I guess I was just a little forgetful today. There was this kid who was labelled as “problematic” by my SA. Do not get me wrong – he does have his behaviour issues. BUT, he is so curious, and I know he has many good ideas. He asked me about an interesting question: how would people treat me if I went back to the 1960s? “because I was not white”. It was hard to really give him an accurate answer, but that question just blew my mind. I am sure he will be really interested in the novel. 🙂 I cannot wait to help him discover the incredible talents and skills that he has. This class was quieter than the previous class, which I did not like as much. I think I just need the right hook to get them engage. I do not know what it will be, but I will keep trying.

The fourth class was quite interesting too. When I walked in, some students waved and said hi to me. I felt very welcomed. And then this one student walked in and said, “Miss Lui, I missed you” in Chinese. Even though he could have spoken in English, I did feel very happy. I know I am making an impact on the students. I cannot wait to help these ELL kids to become successful. Friday will be the first step – I hope they will show up in the after-school program. I can only wish.

It was great to be teaching. I felt a little bit overwhelmed. I know I just need to get used to it. Everything is going to be okay. 🙂