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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Teaching Community's Blurty:
| Sunday, August 8th, 2004 | |
| 6:05 pm [missyasemi] |
Teachcom is moving Hi everyone, Unfortunately this community has taken off the way I was hoping it would so I'm attempting msn group pages as there are alot more users and easier access. One of the main problems people have told me about using a blurty is that the signing up process in long-winded and many people are not into keeping an online journal. So, in another attempt I've started up an msn group. Hope to see some of you there! Here is the url if you're interested: http://groups.msn.com/Teachcom |
| Wednesday, June 23rd, 2004 | |
| 8:47 pm [sosammy] |
Assessment strategies I recently finished this semester of classes and I received a unit of work back that I wish to discuss with others in the teaching field. The assessment task involved the design of a unit of work. The design involved the instructional sequence for a 6 week unit and assessment. I achieved well in all sections except for assessment. For the assessment section I had a few checklists that I would use throughout the unit and then a rubric for the final piece of assessment which was a culminating assessment task. I did not receive much in the form of constructive feedback from the marker and now that the semester is over, it is hard to contact anyone. So my question to you is, how do you assess? how much assessment should I have in a 6 week unit? how often should I assess and what other devices than checklists and rubrics do you use when you assess? how much of the assessment should be summative? I'd much appreciate any comments that will shed light in this field. |
| Wednesday, May 19th, 2004 | |
| 8:43 pm [missyasemi] |
Cooking with kids Today I had a cooking lesson with my kids. We baked some melting moment biscuits but there was one problem that is perplexing me (ok, this is more of a cooking question than relating to teaching), I have used this recipe before and this has never happened to me but the biscuits expanded and lost their shape. Only one batch turned out right and I can't work out why? I had helpers monitoring that students used the right amount of ingredients and I checked that all the mixures were the right texture before getting the kids to use the cookie cutters but it just didn't work! Here are the ingredients we used: 200g butter 2 cups icing mixture 1/2 cup cornflour 1 1/2 cups self-raising flour 1 teaspoon vanilla essence They tasted fantastic by the way! The kids decorated them with m&ms and jaffas - tres delicious! |
| Tuesday, May 11th, 2004 | |
| 10:20 pm [missyasemi] |
Sick Days What is your take on sick days? Do you take them or do you go in and teach regardless? Also, how does your schools adminstration react to you taking sick days? |
| Saturday, May 8th, 2004 | |
| 1:35 pm [sosammy] |
Introduction Hi I'm new to this community and just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Samantha and I'm in the process of completing my elementary/primary degree. At the same time I am working part-time as a teacher aide at a private school (but I won't say where because I'm sure I'd like to rant about occurings in the future)!! Teaching is great but I'd have to say that the degree is very long winded and I often feel that a lot of the work we do, in terms of assignments are irrelevant to what we need to know in order to succeed as teachers and leaders. In other words, too much theory and not enough practical information. Looking forward to future discussions, Sammy. |
| Wednesday, April 28th, 2004 | |
| 5:24 pm [missyasemi] |
Overseas Interactive Learning hello fellow teachers! I am seeking out teachers of grade 2 or 3 classes who are currently studying native animals and would be interested in having their students correspond with students in a grade 2 class in Australia. I am thinking about something along the lines of a flat stanely except sending a native animal teddy e.g. from us you would receive a kangaroo or koala *is there a special name for this sort of project?* Let me know ASAP if you are interested, we will have to set things up pretty quickly as I am only at the school I am teaching for another month! Thanks and hope to hear from people soon! Maria p.s. cross-posted to numerous teaching communities |
| Wednesday, April 21st, 2004 | |
| 6:35 pm [missyasemi] |
Lessons from the Playground Today was an excellent learning day. I learnt the things that you don't learn at university; the sort of thing you learn from real-life 'being there' experience - ( Playground duty! ) |
| Tuesday, April 20th, 2004 | |
| 6:11 pm [missyasemi] |
Introduction to measurement (Yr 2) ( Today I taught my first lesson at prac. ) Current Mood:  accomplished |
| Sunday, April 18th, 2004 | |
| 3:02 pm [umas] |
Two interesting links about student bloopers:- Worst Analogies Ever Written in a High School Essay http://strangeplaces.net/weirdthings/analogies.html A History Of The World According To Student Bloopers http://strangeplaces.net/weirdthings/students.html |
| Saturday, April 17th, 2004 | |
| 10:16 pm [missyasemi] |
Hi everyone, It's been awhile since I last posted however I have been reading the community posts and I have noticed some new members! welcome to the new members! I updated the communities information page awhile ago so if you haven't seen it, go have a look and tell me what you think. In other news, I've been really busy with uni assignments and feel rather overwhelmed at all the work that I need to do - I'm sooo behind. I just can't wait for this semester to be over so that I can have a proper rest! Also, I am starting my one month teaching block on monday. I'm teaching year 2 and will be doing a unit on measurment (length, volume and mass) and a unit on literacy with the theme of australian animals. Planning these units is taking forever and I'm still working on them! I'll be teaching my first lesson on measurement on tuesday and I'll be sure to come back and let everyone know how to goes! Same goes for all you members out there - fell free to reflect on your teaching experiences or other teaching related matters here! Don't be shy! |
| Thursday, April 15th, 2004 | |
| 1:37 am [6969jimbo6969] |
Momentous Memories and Madcap Mayhem Credits and Debits and Habits, Plumbing the Rabbit Hole of Memory EACH INSTANT AS RECOLLECTION & ACTION COMBINED “Best laid plans of mice and men go aft aglee” is close to Donne’s original quotation. A lithe lass with whom I shared some sweet, hot, wet interactions recently left a red rose and paper containing two words---“THANK YOU!”---on the pillow we shared, my unusual somnolence allowing her quiet escape to Miami. She paid me a marvelous compliment, just before she fled forever into the night. As we stared into each other’s eyes by the guttering light of candles, she whispered to me, “I can see that you would become really habit forming.” I find myself feeling the same way about BLOGging. Goodness! The opportunity to share the word of the day with the world is almost overwhelmingly seductive. Today, for example, just the tiniest sliver of what there is to convey would include a remembrance of the eighty fifth anniversary of “THE LYNCHING OF FIVE UNKNOWN NEGROES” in Millen, the seat of Jenkins County, Georgia. The idea of these men, dismembered and burned in similar fashion as recent victims in Iraq, being unremembered is of course absurd. The families from Jenkins County with whom I’m now working know kin of these long ago victims, two of whom still remain in the area. My compadres have more concern just now with the Millen Sheriff, Bobby Womack, who is a psychopathic killer, a brilliant thief, and one of the funniest and trickiest politicians in the history of a region replete with such men. “He could charm a cobra out of its fangs and put the snake’s eyes out before it knew what hit him,” says Richard Evans, a lifelong law-enforcement officer who quit the Millen County force in order to stay alive. Evans continues to implore the FBI and the Justice Department to look at the situation here, although he too remembers April 14th as an historic day of infamy, that not one White person outside of this room where I type, recalls. The stories from Jenkins County, from Swainsboro, from Savannah(DOES ANYONE SEE?)from across the South really---where White supremacist thinking is about to face an unstoppable comeuppance as Blacks find themselves with little choice but to stand and fight---are about to explode onto the world stage. Very few people are aware of this profound social tension, just as the people living downstream from a decrepit dam may not see the signs of its pending collapse and their inevitable inundation. Readers can say, “I read about it in that madman’s BLOG” a while back. But that’s not what I wanted to mention today, as three of my colleagues, lacking insurance, are nursing abscesses and other dental problems, and I’m wondering when my turn at the ‘can’t-afford-the-necessities game’ will arrive again. The Southern Appalachians have more variety of species than anywhere else on earth, and the variety of humans has begun to reflect that diversity too. Thus, here I sit, stories from every continent swirling into my life, and this calling is about as easy to make manifest as quantum physics is to teach to pre-calculus pre-schoolers. I could post a hundred pages a day, time could agree to a time-out, a million year hiatus in which all I would do is chronicle what has come to me during the span of my puny life, and were I to keep the pace I would still barely scratch the surface of the combination of hilarious, nefarious, ludicrous, generous marvelosity that has spun me around like a leaf in a hurricane. That’s what I wanted to say today. And goodness, goddess, gracious bless me, all praise to the great and unknowable Ran-Dom that has let all this come to pass, thanks to God and thanks to you who read and thanks to those who pass like ships in the night. I’m betting on life, come what may. And, of course, correspondence is welcome! |
| Sunday, April 11th, 2004 | |
| 4:23 am [6969jimbo6969] |
The Southeast Community Research Center is developing a Citizen Jury in the South, a historic first. Vannevar Bush was a cousin of two of the past three Presidents. He was also a gung-ho supporter of all that is establishment in America. He was also, however, a proponent of science, and he recognized that science without democracy inevitably creates a contradiction in terms. He said, when he was in the midst of chairing the first Presidential commission to examine national science policy, that everyone---rich and poor, sophisticated and simple---longs to know how the world works, what the causes are that determine our fates, essentialy all that is knowable. He went on to say: “It is the privilege of man to learn to understand; that is his mission. If we abandon that mission under stress we shall abandon it forever, for stress will not cease. Knowledge for the sake of understanding, not merely to prevail, that is the essence of our being.” Anyone paying attention to science practices today knows that---at the corporate, or governmental policy, level---proponents of the practice of this vision now are few and far between. I have the privilege---as one of the projects for which I am writing, hacking away at PR, and doing some planning and development---to be part of a group of folks who are doing something to empower science for the people. We’re doing this in the South, too,where socially repressive science is much more common than socially democratic work. Military and corporate technology activities in the region are particularly likely to foul our nests with pollution and danger. Community Based Participatory Research is most difficult where communities lack basic capacities to act in their own behalf. A Citizen Panel Demonstration Project is going to be happening in Atlanta in June, nonetheless, a sort of people’s jury to look at development issues here in ‘Hotlanta,’ where gentrification and the dollar are almighty. Primarily African American neighborhood activists are, week-by-week, learning some of the tools of science and analysis, as well as how to find evidence and witnesses to speak in favor of what they know to be in the best interests of their neighborhoods, their communities, and their children. This Community Classroom process is happening on a shoestring, of course, and we need more people “pulling on the rope,” in order to make our event upcoming powerful. But that it is coming to pass at all is just so unbelievably cool. This application of “social technology” is something that, literally, has never taken place in Dixie before. I’ll keep folks apprised and relate any particularly cool positive things, as well as report on some of the perfidy that activates this work at the grassroots level. |
| Saturday, April 3rd, 2004 | |
| 8:20 pm [tali] |
Hi everyone, my name's Alexandra and I live in Geneva, Switzerland. I am currently teaching French and English in a High School to advanced as well as to first year students. I also give two seminars on critical and literary theory in the University. I have been in this community for a little while and I have noticed that very few people (including myself, I must admit) post here and that no one really knows the other. I thought it might be a good idea to introduce ourself and get to know each other. Of course, it is just an idea and you might disagree. However, I feel like trying. Have a nice day! Alexandra |
| Friday, March 26th, 2004 | |
| 2:38 pm [writingismylife] |
SORRY!!! My apologies...i posted this to the wrong community! But since most of it is teaching related, if anyone has anything to share I'm all ears :) |
| 2:36 pm [writingismylife] |
Ramblings about Sharing Pedagogies... Hey all! Well…there are a few things that I highlighted in the Sharing Pedagogies reading we did for Thursday, that we either skimmed over or only touched briefly upon, so I thought I’d address them now. First I want to reiterate my awe that crazy Brian had 150 pages of draft materials (“Lezlie and Brian’s Excellent Academic Adventure.”) Okay, I give my students 4 page essays usually. And even though I’m not a math person this averages out to be 37 ½ drafts. I struggle with getting my students to produce one draft for the peer review session. And I feel I’ve accomplished something when most of them show up with at least two pages. I think that Brian has OCD. I just wanted to put that out there. “The best way we know to teach the act of writing is to have students write in class and for teachers to write with them, talk with them as they write, help them when they get stuck, suggest a trick or three when they need it, and when they’ve finished something, ask them all to share with each other how they got through it”(53). How does this translate into the actual writing class? While I might be able to sit down with a few students during a class period, what about all of the rest? And how do you keep yourself from writing it for them? Because sometimes I don’t know how helpful I’m being or if they are actually learning anything when I do these one on one writing sessions. And I’m really stuck on this whole positive feedback issue. I don’t think I praise my students enough for the things that they are doing right. I guess I just assume they will realize they are doing it well or correctly because I haven’t mentioned it. And what if it is really difficult to find something positive to say…do I make something up? Because really, I’ve had papers that were just terrible, papers where the student even failed to spell my name correctly. I have also noticed that I write a lot in the margins, which apparently is a bad thing. I’ve tried cutting back some and softening comments by starting with something positive and concluding with a smiley face. I wonder if they are annoyed by this? Current Mood:  chipper |
| Wednesday, March 3rd, 2004 | |
| 9:58 pm [molly_mil] |
brain gym i hear that 'brain gym' strategies are great for getting children focused in class especially children with some learning disabilities. i was wondering if anybody out there was familiar with the brain gym exercises and would like to share them. ive been searching the internet and library and havent come up with anything on the practical side, just a heap of theory about how great it is. |
| 4:08 pm [missyasemi] |
Today I visited my prac school to find out what grade I would be teaching and details about what time to be there on the first day and where I should park. I've been given a grade 2 class at a new basics school (these are trial schools and work around the concept of rich tasks - see http://education.qld.gov.au/corporate/newbasics/ if you want details). We'll be doing the rich task called, Physical Fitness but I am yet to find out what that will involve exactly. I'm pretty nervous about teaching grade 2 as I have never taught that grade before. All my pracs so far have been with the upper primary (9+ year olds) so I'm not too sure what I should expect. One week until I find out *drum beat* |
| Tuesday, March 2nd, 2004 | |
| 9:50 pm [missyasemi] |
Peer Tutoring and Special Needs has anyone ever used peer tutoring as a technique to help students with special needs in a mainstream classroom? if so, how did it go? if not, what is your take on the topic? |
| Saturday, February 7th, 2004 | |
| 6:42 pm [missyasemi] |
Portfolio Ideas Uni starts up again on March 1st and in the second week we are going out on prac! Usually we don't start prac until week 5 or 6 in the semester so it's really early this time! This will be my final prac in which I will have my final interview and present my portfolio. So my questions is regarding portfolios - what do you think school principals are interested in seeing? did you have anything in you're portfolio that really stood out? So far this is what I know I'm going to put in my folio: + sample lesson plans with reflections + a unit that I've taught + observations + resources + pictures of students work + communication with parents + communication with fellow teachers Our uni lecturers have been making a big deal about links to the wider community in our teaching but I can't think of how to present this in a folio... Would it just be something I talked about or is it something that I should provide written evidence of? |
| Monday, January 26th, 2004 | |
| 11:06 pm [butterflyjenn] |
Instructional Conversation I just finished writing a paper for my Teaching and Assessment class. It dealt with instructional conversation in the classroom! We get to use a CD-ROM that has a whole bunch of clips from different teachers demonstrating instructional conversation in the classroom. Instructional conversation in the classroom is done in groups, and it is very interesting because the teacher steps back and lets the kids do a majority of the talking. Instead, the teacher just guides the kids. It was great! The clips were a little long, but just seeing how much the kids enjoyed actively being involved in their own learning was worth it, and made me realize that sometimes it is okay to step back as a teacher, and let the kids take the reigns. Heart and Mwah, Jenn Current Mood:  tired |