no concept of time

Sweet baby Jesus! Has it already been a week since I've last posted? Let's just say that planned agenda from my last post was an epic fail. ended up snapping at my dad as soon as i got home and went promptly to bed. by God's mercy, i slept a healing sleep of eleven whole hours to begin my slow recuperation to the living. and the words to sum up pre-service week for me?

i. survived. the. week. 

First Day of School

Objectives: 

• To discuss and understand classroom expectations and routines. 
• To go over the syllabus

Agenda:

• Fill out student information form
• Warm-up: T-shirt activity
• Go over classroom procedures and expectations, syllabus

Reflection:

• Honors Geometry with eighth graders
• small class of angels who all know what to do and do it!
• was able to get through the agenda and meet objectives
• Next time: would not spend as much on going over the general rules because they already know!

• Math 7 with sixth graders
• it was a hot mess. large class of munchkins who just came in from lunch, sat where ever there was an open seat even though there were two seating charts in the room. they had never ending questions and in the middle of the shortened period, i had to get all the students up and point out each assigned desk for the students. 
• managed to give out the syllabus and student inventory before the bell rang
• Next time: Will give students almost the whole time for T-shirt activity and not attempt to go over the syllabus on the first day. overload of information will result in no absorption of said information. 
• Good advice from my resource teacher (RT): Introduce expectations and classroom routines as you encounter it in the classroom, i.e. how to pass in papers. 
• Have students line up outside the classroom where you greet them. Ask them if they remember their assigned seat, tell them explicitly that you expect them to enter quietly and wait for instructions
• You see, sixth graders are like kindergärtners, they can't handle more than three directions at any time. Be clear and walk through what you want from them with them until they get into the routine.

Day 2: Reflections

Today was a beautiful day. Finished going through classroom routines that are particular to my class in both of my classes and managed to almost complete the geometry lesson on the basic building blocks of geometry (undefined terms and more!). Got my geometry students to go up to the board to unveil and read the many new definitions aloud to their classmates. Seems as though the beginning of the unit will be more lecture-esque because i have to pound in the vocabulary words  Took a long time but i have the flipchart (similar to a powerpoint presentation on the interactive Promethean board) prepared for tomorrow, a slight variation off my friend's. 

Implemented advice from my RT and the dynamics were completely different. i was in control and the students were respectful, listened to directions, and i did not entertain their questions whenever they pleased. classroom management is key, ladies and gentlemen. without it, learning cannot take place and it is impossible to teach content meaningfully for the students. Gave both classes an overview of Unit 1 so that the students have an idea of what they'll be learning and a rough outline of when their assessments (quizzes, selected hw, unit tests, etc) will take place. 

• Next time, don't forget to take attendance.