Despite teaching year long classes, the new semester brings with it a new beginning. A blank grade book, a new calendar year and a fresh outlook on teaching. Right now is a great time to make adjustments and try out ideas conceived during the fall semester. I’ve come up with a list of items I’d like to focus on as I begin my new semester.
Teach slower, teach longer.
As I reflect back on the fall semester I am amazed at how much I was expecting my students to learn at such a fast pace. I realized this as I was creating the fall semester exams and saw that every term or important concept I wanted them to know we hadn’t spent more than a class period on. One of my biggest goals for the new semester is to spend more time reviewing information and really learning it by heart.
This should also help students who missed classes not get too far behind because they’ll have several chances to learn the material.
Include more small group work.
Something I’ve been very bad about has been asking all my questions to the entire class and getting responses from only 4 kids at most. It’s a great learning experience for those special few who answer, but most of the class gets left out.
Instead, I plan on using a technique called ‘think-pair-share’, where students think of their response, pair off with a partner to talk about it, and then the partners share their ideas with the class. This gives the every student a chance to share a thought with someone else but doesn’t take require the entire class to hear everyone’s response. It also adds some accountability to someone besides me.
Use tickets more effectively.
At the beginning of December I introduced tickets to my students as a way to reward them for good behavior and class attendance. Since the introduction I’ve been a little stingy with the tickets.
It’s not so much that I haven’t found behavior to reward, it’s just that I’ve had trouble keeping organized with all the tickets. I’m hoping a little more planning and a few sheets of paper can help keep track if who’s done what.
Watch a soccer game
I played soccer in high school and hope to someday coach a team therefore you can guess that I also enjoy watching soccer. I have several students in my classes who play and it would be great to support the kids.
Use CHAMPS as a behavior management tool.
I’ve heard the praises of CHAMPS but haven’t found it too applicable to high school students. The ways I’ve seen it implemented have all been targeted towards elementary level kids and I’m thinking high schoolers would be very annoyed with some of the implementations. I’m hoping some quick googling will reveal methods for using champs with high schoolers.
Fish tank
When I took over in the middle of the fall semester, my new room was actually the past teacher’s old room. Everyday I found something new (old) and it was almost like a big toy box. Sure, I have little use for half the stuff, but I certainly can use some of it.
One item I found is was an empty fish tank. Immediately I wanted to fill it up and add some fishies, but my mentor advised me to hold back on it, at least until after my two-week Christmas break. Good advice, seeing as a two-week absence can make a fish or two go belly-up. But now that the break is over, I hope I can fill the tank back up. Fishes are cool and it’ll break up the white wall effect of the classroom.
Others items
- Display more student work
- Return grades quicker
- Be stricter about absences counting as zeroes if missed work not made up
Of course I probably won’t accomplish all I want, but I do expect to change some things. It’s exciting to think about the possibilities and it’s nice to see I have lots of room for improvement.
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