Thursday, October 04, 2007

1/6 (or 6/36) of the way there!

tomorrow marks the end of the 1st 6weeks grading period....sigh of relief! this past week or so has been fast and furious trying to get all those kiddos who didn't turn in homework assignments for about 3 weeks to have a passing grade in my class. lots of before school tutoring, and assigning them to the afterschool tutorial program and a little creativity (the beauty of being able to drop 2 HW grades!!)...and i've got it, mission accomplished. i have a new plan for this 6 weeks that i think will be better for the students and definitely for me in the long run. any student missing 2 assignments will immediately be assigned to after school tutoring program every day (until 6pm) until all assignments are completed. this will help the missing assignments not snowball on me. this of course means i need to be very on top of my game so i KNOW how many assignments they are missing.

we've been doing some preliminary work (prime factorization, GCF, LCM, preteaching vocabulary) and starting tuesday (woohoo for columbus!) we will be full force ahead into our fraction unit for the next month or so. i'm trying to do a really good job of explaining conceptually what we're doing and how everything fits together, and the kids seem to be responding well. for instance, today we were discussing equivalent fractions. i had them shade half a piece of paper and we wrote a fraction (1/2). then without more shading, we folded the paper in half again and came up with 2/4. and so on. these fractions are the same because in relation to the whole, you still have the same 'part of a whole'. or something like that. we also then looked at the patterns and developed a rule that would work for any fraction, which is of course to multiply the numerator and denominator by the same number. the kids were freaking out getting so excited trying to figure out what it was, because i was totally playing along with all their ideas, acting surprised when they didnt work. but the whole class was ecstatic when one kid would finally get it right. i also found it amusing that they would try to stump me (i was showing them that you can use any number you like) with large numbers...like 652. and i would take 1/5 and come up with 652/3260, and they would be genuinely impressed that i could do such math. o brother. these kids have a loooong way to go! and i shall take them there. well, a little way there.

overall, i'm still feeling slightly overwhelmed by this teaching assignment. every school has its own culture that can provide challenges, and ours certainly has its fair share. the getting up early and long drive and getting home late is still hard for me to get used to. also the work required on the weekends is getting a little old. i feel like i've made some good progress building rapport with the kids and i do see glimpses sometimes of solid learning taking place. but it can also be very frustrating when you feel sometimes as if you are talking to a crowd of people but the only person listening is you! and i have of course made a few of my kids burst into tears, which is difficult. i've had a kid yell at me and tell me he doesn't like me and thinks i'm nice to everyone but him and proceed to slam the door to my classroom. i've also had a kid write me a note on her homework that she wants to be a teacher and i am her role model. so its definitely a challenging mix of ups and downs. and i like it.

ross and i decided to take a break from responsibility/work/etc on sunday night and go watch a movie at the theater. we watched 'the kingdom' and it was pretty intense, but we really thought it was a good movie. tonite we also started a new study with our small group written by our church (www.givestressarest.com) that i i think we will enjoy. other than that, we continue to hang out with each other, and try to fit in as many enjoyable activities as possible in the limited time we have. i will admit that i realized with great horror on the way home tonight that i had forgotten our 7month anniversary yesterday! the first 6months of our marriage i had remembered and tried to do a little something special. ross says this means we have graduated to quarterly or yearly celebrations. but i told him thats silly. of course we will continue to celebrate each and every month. to make up for yesterday, i made us some tacos to celebrate 7months and 1 day of being together!

4 comments:

Unknown said...

That's so hot.

Your BFF,
Paris Hilton

PS, Did you catch my new movie? It's so hot. Let's go see the premier in Rome or something and be totally hot.

Evelyn said...

Sharon! I didn't know you and Paris up there were good buddies ;)

SOOO Happy 7 months and 1 day anniversary!!!!!!!!!!

you should use excel to keep up with which kid has turned in what! then you can sort for the blanks and it will be easier for you to know those which haven't turned theirs in.

perhaps assign some kid the responsibility of adding it for you on excel... extra credit opportunity! cheap labor :) haha

laters

thesharester said...

hey girl...i actually have an online gradebook that i can reports on to see who is missing what...but that means i have to have actually gone through the papers to see who has what!

Anonymous said...

I never get enough of the two of you together. It fills me with LOVE for you.