Conferences

This week was conferences.  I really do not enjoy them.  Mostly for the fact that it is the longest day on the planet!  We have conferences on Thursdays.  That morning we have students for half of the day.  They leave at 11.  At my school, the theory of the day is to do "team-building" activities.  That morning, the teams, since I'm at a middle school, does activities (should be academic related) with students.  Then we have a pep rally for about an hour.  This is a morning of running around, and in a way, wasting time.  Now, I'm all for having fun and doing fun things with students, but this is a chaotic morning where teachers are just trying to survive until students leave and we can start conferences.  Some teams plan better than others, but it is still hectic for those that do plan well.  We've thought about having the students go to classes, but nothing much would get done.  Shortening classes would be pointless because we wouldn't be able to really teach anything.  The students are already excited about the day, and have been for the last 3 days, gaining in excitement.  So, it's been a long week up until this point.  Years ago, we had an option of changing the times to teaching all day, but having two later nights of conferences, going from about 3:30-6:30.  Then we would get an entire day off, instead of having to come in for a half day work day.  Staff voted that down because they didn't want to teach 2 full days, and have to do conferences.  Though, the time of conferences would be shortened to 3 hours apiece, instead of about 7 and a half straight.  I would much prefer the 2 days, and day off, or something like it.  Then we wouldn't "waste" time, and more energy.  Maybe I'm crazy.  I don't know. 

Curriculum Unit this week

I found that this is an interesting project.  Though, at times, a few of the applications we were given are very similar.  E-sheets and trackstar seem to be the same thing to me, but maybe I'm just not reading them correctly.  I'm struggling a bit because I don't currently develop lessons.  I'm teaching a very scripted reading intervention program, so I don't have lessons to create.  The other years that I taught reading, we didn't have a curriculum, really, or a text, so the reading teachers in the district more or less made up what they were doing every day.  It sounds horrible of me, but I really didn't plan units out, because we didn't have units to teach to, or any guidance on how to teach a unit.  So, I'm struggling somewhat with creating a unit.  I did read the book Drive-by by Lynne Ewing to my students.  It's a great story.  Short chapters, cliffhangers at the end of every chapter, attention-holding, and relevant (though terms are a bit dated) because it revolves around gangs.  We talked a lot about gangs and their effects, because many of my students live in areas with gangs.  I really should have developed something better for them at the time.  I also struggle with this concept, because the majority of my students have little exposure to computers outside of school, so doing this would not be a very viable thing.  Few of our students have computers at home, so trying to navigate and explore websites would take an extreme amount of time, and pre-teaching.  We want our kids to be technologically adept and capable, but in certain areas, kids don't have the technologies at hand.  It would be great to have a blog, and require kids to use it and post, but few would be able to complete assignments at home, due to the fact that they don't have access.  That would be a lot of work for very few kids.

Geek Your Teaching created by Marilyn Western

Geek Your Teaching is a site that Marilyn Western, the 2008 MACUL Technology-Using Teacher of the Year, created.  She put together a top 10 list of 2.0 websites that can be used in your classroom, and gives suggestions for how to use them.  These are some fantastic resources that will allow you to do a myriad of things with your students.  The sites are free to use, and some have lesson plans and interactive student lessons for different curricular areas.  Students can also directly use these sites to do their activities.  The interactive sites that allow students to blog, chat, create media presentations, share notes, or pictures are able to be made private and accessible to only a class of students at your school.  I was truly amazed by some of these sites she listed, and would love to be able to use them.  I plan to share this with teachers in my building.  She also lists other websites, like an online stopwatch, wordles, rubric generator, and much more.  Definitely worth the time to check out, and spend time exploring!