Sunday, 5/8/2012
Sunday night was absolutely fantastic! My netball team won! I was dramatically improved; only getting whistled at once or twice. Or three times. Definitely less than five, at least. I also made a successful pass enough times that I didn't count it:) Progress!Monday, 6/8/2012
Monday at school was, as all Mondays, a bit of a rough start. When I got to school I realized that the work I had done to prepare for a lesson on Monday morning, had been left on my computer at home; I didn't get to email to myself. I was quite frustrated, and in no real shape to cope with any issues or mistakes. Fortunately, I sucked it up, and was able to do the lesson anyway.
Later on that day, however, I taught a math lesson on graphing which was absolutely awesome! Each student made a chart with five spots to tally; sit ups, push-ups, star jumps (jumping jacks), step-ups, and planking. We all went outside, and students were given a chance to see how many of each of these activities they could do in thirty seconds. This was outdoor exercise, in the sunshine, and out of the classroom - the kids had a great time and followed directions very well! For the planking, all the kids started at the same time, and when I saw one kid go down, I called out the time, so everyone wrote down their own time for planking.
My toughest kids stayed up for 7 minutes!!!! They would have stayed longer, but I cut them off, because all of the other students had returned to the classroom.
Back in the room, students totaled their tallies, and made bar graphs of their exercises. We discussed why the graphs were better ways to represent completed data than the tally charts, why we used tally charts to gather data, and what we could tell just by looking at the bar graph. My kids were SUPER intuitive. Right off the bat, one of my girls said, "You can tell that some of the exercises were harder than others." She was then able to tell me the process she went through to infer that. I was amazed!
After all the students finished their graphs, we looked at what we could tell from comparing two graphs, why you can't always compare two graphs next to each other (in case they have different scales).
After completing the individual graphs, I opened up an excel document on the projector, and had all the students tell me their times for the planking. This I opened into a bar graph first organized alphabetically, and then organized by time. Students were able to make observations and inferences from this final graph.
The whole staff had a professional development meeting right after school on the State of Victoria math curriculum, which I was told I probably shouldn't go to. So I got home early, did some preparation for the next couple days, and watched some Olympics:) I also made peanut butter cookies (which I have been craving, since many Australians think all Americans are obsessed with Peanut Butter); and brought them to school today, Tuesday.
Tuesday, 7/8/2012
This morning I woke up with a progressively worse cough and sore throat, but the peanut butter cookies were a huge hit! They were gone by lunchtime, and several teachers complained that they didn't get one. I'll be baking relatively often this term, I think:).
Today I remembered to email myself the documents I had worked on, and was still able to use them for literacy rotations today. The template and example I had made were, I think, helpful to some of the students who can't think quite as abstractly as some of their peers.
By recess, I was getting tired, and my nose was running. Cough continued, which affected my sore throat. Drank more water - a lot. Also peed a lot.
After recess, we had a WHOLE SCHOOL dress rehearsal for the production on Thursday. It was insane. Our school goes from preps (kindergarteners - 5 year olds) through grade six (twelve year olds). My group, grade threes and fours, is easily the worst behaved level in the school, and it really showed when the whole school was together. All the staff know and understand that the group of kids have a wide variety of needs, behaviorally, socially, emotionally, and academically, and don't blame the 3/4 teachers for the behavioral incidents (thank goodness!). However, it's quite frustrating when a nine year old rolls his eyes at you regularly. Grr. I can handle a lot of problem behaviors, but overt disrespect is something I really, really struggle with. Through lunch I was able to calm myself and refocus my patience a little bit. After lunch I gave him no warnings, and only acted according to the school behavioral plan. He didn't trouble me again. Take that, disrespectful kid!
At lunch we had three separate incidents at recess in the yard based around physical violence with our students. My host teacher dealt with them specifically for the rest of the day, and spent most of the hour outside of the classroom. Although my thrown-together graphing lesson was pretty zoo-ey, my host came back in at the end of the day telling me he really appreciated how dependable I was, and that I did well working with the group I had. (Two of my students spent most of the session yelling back and forth at each other,
"DON'T LOOK AT ME, I'M TRYING TO LISTEN."
"NO, I'M TRYING TO LISTEN, YOU ARE LOOKING AT ME."
"YOU LOOKED AT ME FIRST!"
As a credit to the rest of my class, they did their very best to ignore the prep-level bickering, but some tried to help and got themselves involved, which only encouraged the problem. Oof. It was rough, but we did get to the end of the lesson, eventually.
I came home absolutely drained of energy and sicker than a dog. However, when Kylen called to ask if I wanted to go out for coffee, I said yes, because I hate to turn down any chance to have some Australian experience. Mark took us to a coffee shop...somewhere...and although the bread and hummus and chips were wonderful, the coffee was still nasty. Mark had his hopes up, though, so we both finished our hot beverages. After, we went out for incredible gelato at a place called, "Trampoline: The Flavours jump out at you!"
I will be going there again.
However, as it turns out, I probably shouldn't have gone out, because I came home feeling worse, and about 95% there's a fever tagging along as well. Straight to bed for me, and I'll talk to you all tomorrow, because unless I feel significantly better in the morning, I may spend all day at home blogging. We shall see...
Lots of Love!
-Megan
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