Hello Internet Audience!
I apologize profusely for my week long absence. My teacher mind during the shortened week was literally all over the place! I cannot believe how much I was trying to work in during such a short amount of time. However, I feel like as a team we accomplished quite a bit!
I was able to set up my "guided reading" stations. I want to do stations about 2-3 times a week, and I know that for you elementary minded people. you may gasp and say "oh no! You have to do it everyday!"
Sorry pal, Middle School just doesn't run that way.
The kids really seemed to understand the flow of me meeting with a group, while they are at a designated station that focuses on a specific common core standard.
Last week, I really just wanted them to get used to the routine and we practiced it until it was perfect!
They actually asked me the following day if we were doing stations again! CRAZY!
----->On a different note, today, my students were assessed using the new version of MAP. Now if any of you know what MAP is (Measure of Achievement Progress) you know that traditionally, students just sit at their computers four times a school year to read a text and answer or take their best guess in a multiple choice bubble. Awesome way to teach students valuable life skills... NOT. Luckily MAP updated itself over the summer and now offers more interactive methods of testing and answering reading selections. However, the test is so long that I cannot fathom how exhausted theses poor kids feel! The test is scheduled for an hour, but the kids took about an hour and 45 minutes to complete the test successfully. Maybe MAP can shorten the test and leave only essential questions in their testing program. Or perhaps, they can cut down the amount of skills they want to assess. This would probably give a more accurate reading score at the end.
I do want to give a shout out to a fantastic professor and mentor through my career, Dana Karraker and her class, TCH 204! They have been so kind to view my blog and take the learning the Knobloch way. Thank you for reading! I hope you like what you see!
Tomorrow's history lesson will sure be a tough one. For the past two years I have had sixth graders and have been able to read them a journal entry from my personal sixth grade journal with the date being 9/11/2001 after Mr. Whitman had just turned on the news for us. All of those students had either been born that year or been a year old. This is the first year where my students were not born yet. I hope my journal entry still has the same affect on them as it did my former students.
After the journal entry students will watch a segment on CNN student news, I use this channel ALL the time for current events. This youtube clip is from last year, if you would like to access this year's video you will need to click on student news.
After students listen to me read my entry and watch the segment from a non-fiction medium they will then compare and contrast the two point of views that they just witnessed. They will discuss in groups at first and then we will come together to talk about what point of view means and create a venn diagram comparing the two very different points of views.
One last comment, I was able to get a SMARTboard rolled to my room! (YAY!) So I am a very happy camper! I am so excited for my students to use it to the best of its ability. Also, all of my students have been hired for their classroom jobs. (Yes, middle school can do that too!)
With that I leave you with quite a clever clip of why we need to use Common Core and 21st Century Learning to help our students succeed in the real world!
-HK
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