Week 3

Well, it's another week down and a few more lessons learned.  This week was sort of an odd one being that we had a snow day followed by a two hour delay (on a day which I had my two sections of personal finance).  Needless to say, the periods were shorter on this day, but this worked out well because I had an activity planned anyway, and as it turned out, I was able to make the activity fit perfectly into the shortened periods.

My "lunch" class continues to be a challenge though.  The challenge is three-fold: the class seems to keep one eye on the clock, eagerly anticipating lunch, then after lunch it's often difficult to re-engage them, though I've been reasonably successful thus far, and finally (and most significantly) the chemistry of the class is such that the majority of the students are not interested in the least.  This being the case, the lessons that often captivate and engage my first class, don't have the same impact on my second class (let alone the whole lunch issue).  So, I've been getting a good hands-on lesson in differentiating instruction.  I am trying a new approach with involving a few of the quiet "leaders" in the class who are good students, but don't seem to care much for the material...my hope is to involve them more and start to "beat them from within" little by little.  Overall though, both of my classes are going well and the students seem to be retaining the material...though I will know more in this area after some presentations/quizzes this upcoming week.

The most beneficial thing of my week would have to be interacting with the students on an individual basis.  They seem to enjoy interacting with me individually, and I'm always eager to learn more about them.  Many of them have great ideas huge personalities, so I'm always trying to think of ways to make these factors work to my benefit, and the benefit of the class as a whole.

Also, I find it very beneficial to include two or three of the most important points from the content of the previous class in my introduction each day.  I find the students will often dig pretty deep to try to recall what we talked about, and also it's a good way to fasten the important points to their memory while linking it to new information before we get into the thick of class.

There wasn't anything that went "wrong this week" so it's tough to say what I would change if I could do it over again, however there is one thing that comes to mind.  On Thursday - with my "lunch class" - I had it in mind to split them into groups of three by counting off by numbers.  So, naturally, if you want groups of three (with a couple groups of two being that I had 16 in class on this given day) you would count off by three's, right?? WRONG...I learned this lesson this week after counting off by three's and then finding I had primarily formed groups of five...DUH!  So, with that in mind, I would have learned how to count earlier in the week so that I didn't stumble around in front of 16 seniors who didn't want to be there anyway (haha...it actually turned out fine, and they are all comfortable with me and vice versa, but it was still annoying that I was oblivious enough to make that mistake right off the bat in the beginning of class). Aside from that, I enjoyed this week and have gotten to be very comfortable in front of my classes.

*Lesson of the week for all of you reading this - KNOW HOW TO COUNT BEFORE YOU TRY TO SPLIT UP YOUR CLASSES BY 'COUNTING OFF.'