Wow, I can't believe that in 2 days it will be November. We have conferences this week. I have to admit, they are not my favorite. It seems that parents do not want to hear any negatives about their child, so when you do bring up something, they immediately want to blame you, the teacher.
I am pretty good about documenting everything and I send progress reports weekly, so there should be no surprises academically. Now I have to decide if I want to bring up some behavior/work habit issues. I think with certain parents I will just keep my mouth shut and let them figure it out on their own. I have one set of parents that don't believe anything I say so I have decided not to say anything anymore. It is sad because I am just trying to help their child to become a responsible person, but they don't believe he EVER does anything wrong. Ugh! I love teaching, but the parents can be a real challenge at times.
I wonder if they realize that we really are PROFESSIONALS!! As in we went to college for this and we stay current with what is going on in education. Why, oh why, would any teacher make up something about a student? I mean, don't we all have enough to contend with?
On a good note, I have been visiting the Teachers Pay Teachers website and I have to say there are some pretty good things on that site. And lots of the teachers have free downloads for you. If you haven't visited the site I highly recommend it.
I have been using the math website www.ixl.com with my class to practice basic math skills and review in class work. I am quite impressed with the site. Check it out if you are interested in math!
I signed up for the math site www.tenmarks.com and set up a class and had my students do some work on this site this past week. The frustrating part is that I am now trying to go in and check their work and the report section doesn't seem to be working. I have sent an email and they responded quickly and said is should be fixed by Monday morning. I sure hope so as I told my students that I would be taking a grade on this.
I have spent way too much time on school things this past weekend. I really need to get a life!!!
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Sunday, October 16
I have been reading all these other fabulous blogs by teachers and I just don't know where they get the time to write what they do and add all those pictures and links, etc. I can't even keep up with writing on this blog. I would love to make this a diary of what I do each day with my class but I just can't seem to find the time to do that. By the time I get a chance to sit down and write anything, I am so exhausted that I don't! Maybe all those other teachers are much younger than me, I am not sure. But I am glad that I started this blog because it gives me a place to keep track of all those wonderful teachers out there that are giving me new ideas every day.
I absolutely love the language arts blogs I have found, I wish I could find some math blogs that would directly connect with what I am teaching. I am using the Connected Mathematics Project for the first time this year and let me tell you it is difficult. I have a class that is way behind in skills and they are really struggling. I really need to stick with this program though, because it is very close to what we need to be doing to get the common core in place.
My kids don't know their multiplication facts, can you believe that at sixth grade this is a fact! It blows me away. There may be a child or two that is not capable of memorizing the facts but what's up with the rest of the students? Without knowing the facts, they have extreme difficulty moving forward. And they definitely don't READ AND FOLLOW DIRECTIONS!!! Anybody else out there experiencing that???? Just this past Friday, I put a list of things on the board for them to accomplish, in the order I wanted them accomplished. Do you think most followed the order? No! I have 24 students and 15 of them just did whatever they wanted in the order they wanted, even though I kept saying make sure you have blah blah blah done. While they were supposed to be working, I was giving individual assessments and working with individual students so I wasn't walking the room to check on each of them. You would think by sixth grade they could follow directions!!!
I have not had a class like this in YEARS!!!!
I absolutely love the language arts blogs I have found, I wish I could find some math blogs that would directly connect with what I am teaching. I am using the Connected Mathematics Project for the first time this year and let me tell you it is difficult. I have a class that is way behind in skills and they are really struggling. I really need to stick with this program though, because it is very close to what we need to be doing to get the common core in place.
My kids don't know their multiplication facts, can you believe that at sixth grade this is a fact! It blows me away. There may be a child or two that is not capable of memorizing the facts but what's up with the rest of the students? Without knowing the facts, they have extreme difficulty moving forward. And they definitely don't READ AND FOLLOW DIRECTIONS!!! Anybody else out there experiencing that???? Just this past Friday, I put a list of things on the board for them to accomplish, in the order I wanted them accomplished. Do you think most followed the order? No! I have 24 students and 15 of them just did whatever they wanted in the order they wanted, even though I kept saying make sure you have blah blah blah done. While they were supposed to be working, I was giving individual assessments and working with individual students so I wasn't walking the room to check on each of them. You would think by sixth grade they could follow directions!!!
I have not had a class like this in YEARS!!!!
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