Happy New Year

Happy New Year! Welcome to my first post of 2011. Today was a four day school week with a break today (Thursday) for Epiphany. I was technically on the clock and so I busied myself with photocopying, planning and entering grades into the computer.  I also managed to do some of my homework for my master's class that I started. 
I am taking a reading class that analyzes the research that has been done on what strategies are the best to teach reading. So far, the class has proven to be very interesting. I read and analyzed a document that was published by the National Reading Board which did exactly what we are doing, analyzing reading instruction techniques. I was a bit apprehensive about reading a document that seemed to be filled with statistics but it turned out that it was not as dry as I had feared. I will just cut to the chase and not bore you with the details of the documents that I had to read.  Basically, much of the research that has been performed on trying to figure out what reading instruction method works the best all comes to a very general conclusion.  First, there is not one method that works better than the other, only a few can be scientifically supported and that there have been lots of studies on the individual strategies but not many on the combination of strategies that would work for specific groups of students.  Mmmmm...not much of this is new because teachers know that there is not one strategy that works to teach a group of students a single concept nor is a combination of strategies guarenteed to work from one year to the next! Duh...
This week has been iteresting in my class.  The days were spent reteaching my students their manners and the routine in class.  There have been a few shocking revelations in my class.  One, is that the pace of the class is picking up and the students don't like that. the second one is that the work is getting progressively harder and they don't like this either. And (shock!) I still will not let them copy off of each other. Startling, I know. 
Her's my crazy teaching story for the week.  Tuesday was the second day of science that we have had in a while.  However, this subject is no less important than any other subject. They were continually talking out of turn, interrupting me and telling me, "but I don't get it!!"  So, I told them that I do not like teaching students who are rude and they can either be polite or they can sit in silence and I will teach science after school.  Wonder which option they chose.  The latter, of course.  So, when the German teacher came wandering in, wondering where the kids were, I politely explained to him that the kids had chosen to be taught science after school for the aforementioned reasons.  Hopefully they won't make that choice again because it's  pain to have to teach after school hours.  I did get some grading done while they were sitting, mulling over their choice. On a  bright note, I think I hit the jackpot when I gave the kids mechanical pencils for Christmas.  They loved them and now I have fewer kids, spending less time at the pencil cup (remember.....the dull and sharp pencil cups.)  trying to "choose" a pencil and breaking the sharpened point off of them just so they could whine about not having a sharp pencil to use.  So sneaky and ingenius of me! Tomorrow is Friday and a short day. I just have to solve my problem of dealing with whiny students...off to google.....