Last Thursday my teaching partner, Courtney, and I were introduced to Lisa Carpenter's period 7 sophomores for the first time. Let me just say, it was quite the change from the honors seniors I had been getting used to. Not to say that I enjoyed these new students any less, they were just very different. Most of the class was made up of students with IEP's and there was even an ELL student mixed into this class. I could tell they were a roudy bunch of kids right from the start because they were already out of their seats, super chatty, and very loud.
Challenge accepted.
Courtney and I positioned ourselves strategically in the classroom while going over the students' Crucible crossword puzzles that they were supposed to have completed for homework. I was walking the aisles while Courtney posted at the front of the room where she could survey everyone. It took a little while and some efforts to get them focused, but we ended up getting a good variety of the students to share their answers before we moved on to reading Act 5 of the play.
It was a struggle figuring out who wanted which parts and getting students to volunteer to read, but once they finally started and got going they did pretty good.
Until there was a bug next to one student's chair. Who knew a single bug could get 7 different students so off track?
Courtney nipped the issue in the bud, though, by brushing it off and urging them to continue. She's awesome, I am very lucky.
Besides a little chatting here and there that we immediately hushed (I was standing right in the middle of the desks where the chattiest girls were), the rest of the lesson went on pretty smoothly.
Lessons of the day for teaching lower level kids:
-Take things slow
-Prevent talking and goofing off by standing right with the kids
-Get them involved
-Don't let them run the room!
Sometimes the students who challenge you are the one's you get the best experience from! Just keep in mind our experience last year with the American Experience class!
ReplyDeleteI love your little tips at the end of your post! I'll keep them in mind as i begin to teach my freshmen!
Your classroom management really shined today girls! Proud to see that Fred Jones helped out with his distance idea :)
ReplyDeleteI agree with Megan, the ones who are the most rowdy are the ones who you get the best experience for. When we first started at Central we were honestly scared, the kids seemed to have extreme behavior problems. Now all of the has changed, they love to work with us and I am sad that next week we have to leave. They are so bright and I love listening to what they write, their lives are so different and this makes them see the world in a different way. Of course we still have the chatty girls, who want to talk about their boyfriends or they boys who want to discuss sports but we also have implemented your classroom techniques in ours and they have worked wonderful.
ReplyDeleteAww yay Lucy I am so glad they worked for you too! I feel the same way about these kids now, I don't want to leave them!! And thank you Ash, I thought I would try it out, and it went pretty well! Meg, you are so right, I still miss those kids!
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