Parental Interaction

I haven't seen that much parental interaction with my CT.  One thing that my CT does is at a certain point in the chapter that we're on, she'll send out an general e-mail to parents of students that are missing more than 4 assignments.  From what I've seen, I'm not sure that this does too much to get the students motivated.  It may do something with just the kids because it seems like it's something that my CT said she has been doing for a while.  I also think she wouldn't do it if she doesn't see an impact that comes from it.  There is also one student whose parents are very involved with their kids learning.  My CT is in contact at least once a week and telling them how he is doing in the class.  There have been a couple of times where my CT has had to call home to parents.  Once was about a kid who wasn't paying attention in class and would just look at a calculator the whole class period.  She had to call home and tell the parents what was going on.  She found out some information on why the kid was struggling in class.  From this, I think that it is best to call home when there are behavior issues that are going on in class, and not necessarily when the student is falling behind on work (unless it's really really bad).

Hearing Impaired students

The topic for this week is the accommodations for students with special needs.  I am very fortunate to get to work with a couple of kids that are hearing impaired.  One of the students is partially deaf, so he can hear and talk but usually uses the translator.  Then the other hearing impaired student is completely deaf.  They're both in the same class together so we have a translator in my classroom for them.  The one thing that is hard for me is when I am giving a lesson and I'm trying to speed through some stuff to get it all in, the translator has to stop me and tell me to slow down.  That can kind of screw with the pace of the class.  The other hard thing is that you can't communicate with them yourself.  I think sometimes with the translator, some things may get lost in translation and may not get to the student the way you wanted it to.  Luckily the translator that they have is pretty good at math so she does a good job of trying not to change what I am saying up a whole lot.  With that being said, I really enjoy having those students and their translator in there.  They are all teaching my how to sign, so they're are a couple of things that I can sign now.

Assessment and paper load

First there are a couple of great things that one of my CTs does for a students self-assessment.  One is for the homework.  She usually has them up a one sentence summary of of how they felt about the assignment.  Usually, students just write it was fine.  However, there are sometimes where a students writes "I really didn't get this" or "This was hard for me."  I think even that little of a statement is very useful.  If they say either of those, we can pinpoint who's getting and who isn't getting the material.  We can then look out for them while they are in class.  One other thing that my CT while going test is have the students fill out a chart on the problems they got wrong.  Some of the choices are "silly mistake" or "I didn't understand what it was asking for" etc.  I think this helps us especially with when we take the cumulative.  This also helps us pinpoint what we need to go over before they are tested over it again.

One thing that we do to reduce the paper load isn't really reducing the amount of paper at all.  We reduce the amount of work for grading.  What we do in our classroom is that we grade 6 random questions in the assignment.  We grade them on accuracy.  Grading this way usually takes only about 10 min.  I think that this is a good balance of getting students feedback and not spending the whole night grading one homework assignment. 

Pacing

Pacing is something that I have trouble with.  First off, it would be helpful if I could read a clock.  In one class, I looked up at the clock and thought that I had 10 min left, bur in reality it turned out that I had about 3.  So that's one thing that may be helpful.  But in all seriousness, I think that it is better to be over prepared and have too many things to go over.  It also isn't that hard to come up with things to do.  For example, if I'm done with a good chunk of time left in class, I'll have the students work on the first homework problem or so and see if they have any questions.  This is a good way to use the last 3 or so minutes in class where students won't start doing their homework on their own.  One other thing that helps me with my pacing that I need to start doing more is using a timer.  I have used one a couple times in the past but always forget to use it more.  I like using it because it sets a deadline for the students when they need to get their activity done.  But then if I didn't give them enough time I can give them more and then adjust that for the next lessons coming up.

Tech Edge Conference

Going to the Tech Edge Conference was a great experience for me.  It was cool seeing what Aurora is doing with their 1-to-1 classrooms.  Even though it was a conference on one-to-one classrooms, I think that I learned a lot that I could use in a classroom that isn't.  Especially in the first classroom that we went into.  I thought that the heads up game was a great way for students to review vocabulary and sayings that will help them with assignments and tests.  I also thought that the QR reader for the students to see the answers to the review questions was smart.  It's a way for the students to complete the problems without having the key to them right in front of them.  I also thought that the ebackpack was a really good idea.  I wonder if that could still be effective in a non 1-to-1 classroom?  Because I would definitely use that now that I am seeing how unorganized some students are.  One question that I have is how the administration got the teachers that I have been at the school a long time to buy into becoming 1-to-1.  Those teachers have been teaching without it for a long period of time, so I wonder how hard it was for them to accept it.  After this conference I would definitely enjoy teaching at a 1-to-1 school.  The opportunity for every student to have technology in their possession, and using that to supplement their education would be an awesome opportunity.