Yesterday in a department meeting with RLA teachers, a teacher brought up an issue she is having with a parent of a gifted child. Differentiation is the topic, and whether or not teachers are trained well enough to be doing this and how much extra time this takes to do for every lesson. When I went to college, we were trained on differentiation and required to plan adaptations for both learning disabled and gifted kids. I realize that it takes extra time, but I believe that every student deserves the right to succeed, and that may mean providing a variety of activities to keep all levels of kids engaged during a lesson with the same objectives. There are some simple ways to tweak activities that would count as differentiation but not require a substantial amount of extra work on a teacher’s part. Because this is the way I was trained, it just takes me a couple of minutes to think of some adaptations to add to the end of a formal lesson plan. I am not always implementing these adaptations in class, but it will be easier to do so when I am in charge of my own classroom. Regardless, they are always there if they are needed. Writing a DEP, however, does not seem to fall within the realm of a teacher’s responsibilities. For IEP’s, the special education teacher writes those (with the aid of teachers, parents and the students) and it should be the same for gifted students and DEP’s.

There is politics at any school that you go to. That I know. The major difference between the two districts I have spent time in thus far is that instead of being concerned with a large population of ADHD or learning disabled students, we have parents concerned about their “gifted” child. That is amazing to me! I know there are talented students in every school, and parents who care in every district, but I think the amount of these populations change with location and socioeconomic status.

Despite the politics and issues that sometimes engulf a school, I have an important piece of wisdom to remember that was written to me in a letter from my first cooperating teacher: once you close the classroom door, it is just you and them, and that is where the magic happens. Strive to learn and grow with them, and to not “be a teacher” but “be yourself.” Do what you can to make the learning experience meaningful for all students in the room.

Between the hours of English 11 (2nd & 7th) today, I made an appearance at the Great Lakes Writer’s Festival at Lakeland College where Ms. Hogue had three students. This was an amazing experience. The two writers that presented during a session were very thought-provoking, which led to an interesting whole group discussion about the future and literature’s role in it. I have my own thoughts on that, which I will reserve for another location.

To review for the test, I created a flash card game to play after students completed and turned in their John Adams’ packets today. I used the fill in the blank and multiple choice questions from the test to create note cards of terms that could be paired with another card with a definition on it. To play, I distribute enough matching cards to the students and then they mingle to find their match. Of course, to make this the best learning experience it could be, students should try to think of what would be written on the card they are looking for. Also, when they approach another student and discover that they are not their match, they should try and say what card that other student is looking for. This gets them to encounter more terms, and I think students learn or remember best when they have to try and come up with it on their own. After everybody has a match, they go around the room and the person with the definition reads their card and then the teacher can call on people to guess the answer. The student with the term card can then say what it is and if that person is right. I brought in cookies as another form of motivation for playing this game.

In CE9, students were required to have chosen a topic for their Speak essay. It was our goal to get around to all students in these classes to ensure they have chosen an accomplishable topic, fitting for the requirements of the essay and also for their writing level. Students needed a lot of help formulating thesis statements and ideas for “how” to begin writing. We’ve offered graphic organizers as a tool, but I gave several other tips to students and then asked if they understood what I was saying. I didn’t move on to another student until the one I was talking to had a clear idea of what to do next. This was very time-consuming and somewhat exhausting (lots of talking) but it is obviously worth it and was necessary as I discovered some of the students’ questions.

The mini-lesson I did in English 11 today was “Combining Sentences for Smoother Prose.” I had a transparency that we completed as a class first, and then a handout to do in partners. Most students thought this was simple, although some were more creative and advanced at combining sentences than others.

After the mini-lesson, we continued reading John Adams aloud. I annotated some places and asked questions to discuss while reading. Students were to be filling in guided reading questions as we worked through it. The rest is assigned as homework for tonight, or to complete early in class tomorrow.

I made my first phone call home to a parent tonight regarding a students’ failure. Turns out we have an I.A.P. on this student, and everything I have noticed in class aligns with this plan and also the mother’s comments. We’ll continue working with this student on staying focused in class, not distracting others, and organizing. It was nice to hear a parent’s voice (especially an understanding one) but I’m not sure if she does her part at home to ask the student about his homework. I guess he is also ODD and so she gets very defiant answers from him. I’ve noticed this as well. It will be interesting to see if there is any progression in his behavior and motivation in class as a result of her bringing it up again at home.

My students in English 11 continued to work on their Ben Franklin packets in groups. However, some things that we noticed yesterday were a lack of and inability to independently read. Many students also screwed around with their time and did not use it wisely. Therefore, they had a time limit today for how much time they had to work on it, and I collected the assignment despite some groups not being done. If they had been diligently working on it, I would not have done that. We then moved on to reading John Adams’ biography by David McCullough. My pre-reading strategy (greatly appreciated by Ms. Hogue) was to read parts of the Declaration to see if they knew what document it was fun and to ask some questions about what those words mean to them. Now as we read the excerpt from Adams’ biography, I can make connections to that and their feelings and experiences with the document. I have annotated my copy so that I can summarize parts for them and ask appropriate questions. I think this will go just fine.

In CE9 we presented their literary analysis essay assignment. Ms. Hogue got their attention first hour by using the metaphor of something dropping to the floor (an essay) and the students had to pick up the pieces by telling her what they are. They successfully came up with the pieces of an essay in this manner, showing that they know what one is and how to structure/write it. I did something similar in 3rd and 6th hours. Seeing as it is Halloween, I had a printout of a skeleton and held it up, asking for traits. What I was looking for were “bare bones” and “it’s all connected” to lead into my discussion of an essay. This went better in 3rd hour than 6th because the latter of course became very distracted with this talk of skeletons. Both, however, successfully came up with the parts of an essay, so I know they are capable and won’t need much guided, whole-class instruction on this. We went over the assignment with them, and then I aided them in setting up their web page to publish this.

Helping with yearbook went well tonight because I was able to help a few people with problems and questions on their pages. It was nice to be able to contribute something

We had our last discussion day for Speak in CE9 today. My final hour of 9th grade never goes as well as I would like. I am using the strategy of waiting to speak until they are all quiet, and this works – although it is still taking them much too long to figure out where they are and how to behave accordingly. It is interesting to see the kids shout out to each other that they need to be quiet. Then they are the ones pointing out somebody’s error instead of me, which is almost more embarrassing for them. We got to talk about some neat things today since we have finished reading the book. There is so much to talk about!! I wish there were more time. This will come with the Speak essay…hopefully brililance about the book will shine through in that. Maybe some are just too fearful about speaking out in front of the class – either they are shy, or they are afraid of souding “smart.” Not sure which it is, but I think there are more students out there that could have a lot to say about the book and they’re not doing it.

We did one of Ms. Hogue’s creative and awesome activities with Speak in CE9 today. The activity is “Analyzing the Pledge of Allegiance.” The main character in Speak doesn’t use her freedom of speech to tell people what terrible thing has happened to her. We learned the history of the Pledge of Allegiance, and then broke it apart to see what it really means. It was interesting to see how many students didn’t know what some of the words in the pledge mean (although this was the expected response to get them thinking about what they’re really pledging to and what it means to them to recite it). They then were asked to write pledges for Melinda and another character in the book, and also one for themself. They reflected on the activity by writing a short paragraph at the end of the assignment. Overall students did very well on this and the objectives were met.