Skip to main content

Panic Mode

Last week was the official Mid-Quarter marker for my school. This meant that mid-quarter grades were due, as well as updates on all IEP goal progress. It made for a busy week for all at school, learning a new grading program (I <3 PowerTeacher) and keeping up with *all* of the IEPs. (For those of you that don't know, every student I teach has an IEP...though not all have math-specific goals).

At the mention of Mid-Quarter, my heart started fluttering a little. It means that the school year is 1/8 finished. It also means that my semester-long Algebra 2 class is 1/4 finished. When I was looking at the state Standards of Learning for that class (there are 20) and thinking about what my students know and are able to do at this point, I entered what we will call "Panic Mode".

Algebra 2 is a tough course. There is so much to cover that is built upon Algebra 1 skills, more indepth and some entirely new concepts. I'm trying to remediate skills from Algebra 1, and cover new skills from Algebra 2, but they aren't getting it! The days that I have had great success and the students "got it", are the concepts that on a quiz 2-3 days later, the students missed the boat completely.

This is my fault for assuming that because they "got it" the first day, it didn't need to be revisited the next day. The "one and done" approach is not effective, but it is so difficult for me to think that it can be different in such a packed course.

Questions for the PLN:
  • How do you handle the pressure of time and breadth of courses while still covering concepts rather than procedures? 
  • How much of your class time is spent allowing students to practice new skills/concepts on their own or with a partner as opposed to watching you demonstrate examples, group problem solving, or the like?
Labels:

Comments

  1. miss.calcul8September 27, 2009 at 8:36 PM

    1. My goal is to make as much progress as possible while making sure students have a strong foundation with each concept. I don't want to rush through to meet every standard and have them walk away not really understanding anything.

    2. It varies. If I lecture most of the time then I give them anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes at the end to work with a partner or on their own on a classwork or homework assignment. Or, I spend the majority of class with them having a whiteboard and trying to solve problems. They can try more than once or get help from me or the students around them. Then at the end, they have something to complete on their own.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ASL/English Vocabulary in the Math Classroom

My last semester in college, while I was student teaching, I had a class that emphasized different key topics in the field of Deaf Education.  One such topic was vocabulary development.  We all already knew that students who are deaf/hard of hearing have a lower vocabulary than their same-age hearing peers for a variety of reasons not least of which being their limited access to "incidental learning" that comes from listening to other people's conversations/tv/radio, etc.  In our class, we talked about ways to introduce new vocabulary in order to give students a more connected understanding of the new word in its five distinct forms. Picture Description/definition ASL sign (if applicable) English word (in print) Fingerspelling of English word I try to be conscious of this as I teach.  It's very difficult sometimes, and many of the math terms to not have standard ASL signs, so it is more difficult for the students to attach meaning and use the new term through f...
4 comments
Read more

Confession...I'm planning to use Khan Academy this year

It seems Khan Academy (henceforth referenced as KA) has a pretty bad rap in some math teacher circles.  I understand that the videos are somewhat lacking in the engagement factor, and motivating students with points and badges can seem somewhat elementary.  I also see that KA tends to focus more on a procedure/pattern than actual problem solving.  All that said, I will be using KA this year in my resource classroom.  I have a group of students that are in my class for numeracy skill building/strategies instruction.  I'm supposed to be teaching them 25 mins/day and allowing them 25 mins/day to work on their homework or classwork.  I have students of all grade and ability levels in one resource class, so lesson planning becomes difficult.  Twenty-five minutes is not a long time when you think about it, seemingly less when you think about real problem solving tasks. Enter KA.  Each student can be working on exercises related to what their indivi...
5 comments
Read more

Professional Goals

On my way to an evaluation team meeting today (I want to write more about that...but don't feel I can confidentially...one bad thing about being myself online and not having a blog pseudonym), I had a bit of a heart to heart with my boss (principal). You might think, "on the way" isn't very long...but picture 100+ outdoor stairs from the school building to the admin building where the meeting was being held...lol. Anyway, he was asking me how things were going, if I could believe that the year is already almost halfway over, and how time has flown in the 1.5ish years I've been in VA. He also mentioned that I have 30 more years to go before retiring. After that comment, he asked about my professional goals: When you're getting ready to retire, what do you hope to have accomplished/done? At first, I didn't know how to respond. I'm not much for long-term planning. I'm lucky to know and have decided that I indeed will be staying in VA for at leas...
7 comments
Read more