jueves, enero 06, 2005
tgi(casi)f
today was a better day. no parent drama in the morning whatsoEVER and i was large and in charge in the afternoon... one of my kids refused to do shit today, so i had a letter ready for his mom at pickup, chatted with her for a bit about his behavior after school, then had a very productive phone conversation with her a little while later. AND... one of the pushier parents from yesterday brought me piping hot homemade corn tortillas. sigh. i'll be totally honest... that kid's getting all As! =P
speaking of grades, it is absolutely astonishing to me how long first graders can take to finish an assignment. today we started a review of mammals to lead into our science fair research project on pandas. the kids' task was to write an ENTIRE page about everything they know about animals. some finished an entire page (between 5-12 sentences) in about half an hour. others literally took over 1.5 hours of time over the course of the day to write half a page. this pace is maddening to me, especially since a six-yr-old's attention span is super short to begin with. there are such huge discrepancies in their ability, more so in this class than i have seen in all my experiences observing other primary and secondary grades (haven't made it to the high school level though, so i'm sure it's worse there). for example, several students are clueless as to the daily math problems we have, which so far have all be addition and only require them to explain their solution using words, pictures, and numbers. again, it takes some 15 minutes while for others 1 hour is not sufficient. i need to start having lots of extra/busy work on hand at all times. differentiation can be such a pain in the ass.
oh, and some of you might enjoy this: another kid had an accident today. that's two in three days. yup, i'm good!
speaking of grades, it is absolutely astonishing to me how long first graders can take to finish an assignment. today we started a review of mammals to lead into our science fair research project on pandas. the kids' task was to write an ENTIRE page about everything they know about animals. some finished an entire page (between 5-12 sentences) in about half an hour. others literally took over 1.5 hours of time over the course of the day to write half a page. this pace is maddening to me, especially since a six-yr-old's attention span is super short to begin with. there are such huge discrepancies in their ability, more so in this class than i have seen in all my experiences observing other primary and secondary grades (haven't made it to the high school level though, so i'm sure it's worse there). for example, several students are clueless as to the daily math problems we have, which so far have all be addition and only require them to explain their solution using words, pictures, and numbers. again, it takes some 15 minutes while for others 1 hour is not sufficient. i need to start having lots of extra/busy work on hand at all times. differentiation can be such a pain in the ass.
oh, and some of you might enjoy this: another kid had an accident today. that's two in three days. yup, i'm good!
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I stumbled onto your blog through a series of untraceable (at least for me) links, and I have to say, even though you've only got about a week's worth of entries, I will keep reading. You are quite honest and funny when it comes to your teaching ways. Congrats on the job so quickly.
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