Take It Easy
Due to some nasty infection of the upper-respiratory track, my day consisted of wanting to just make it 'til three. Luckily, all but one of my classes for today were taking tests, which meant an hour of mostly rest and just twenty-five minutes of teaching and general corralling of students. However, the last period of the day was wide open and made up of my semi-remedial freshmen in a semi-elective of a semi-English (taken in addition to their actual English class).
Recently, I've realized that an alarming number of my students believe identifying parts of speech in a sentence consists of spinning a mental roulette wheel and screaming out whatever pops up. This has led to my taking a step back and working with some admittedly boring grammar worksheets. Working through a scintillating packet on adjectives was on the agenda for the last thirty minutes today. Between my clogged sinuses (and brain, it seems) an their end-of-the-day attention spans, things were not going well. The class is blissfully small (twenty student), so it certainly could have been worse, but still, this was far from a decent lesson.
Finally, I stood up and began calling my students out on their distracted behavior and began amping up the pace. Then, one of the strongest students suddenly blurted out, "I heard someone farted in first period math." In the midst of my jovial (because I can't help but love these kids) frustration, I put that statement up on the board and exclaimed that we would be identifying the parts of speak for each word in this sentence. Amazingly, the next seven minutes flew by as students yelled out answers (often incorrectly, so I forced them to wait ten seconds before answering), and I decorated the statement with boxes and squiggles and an image of a stick figure farting, all the while yelling (lovingly) back at my students. By the end, students were spontaneously exclaiming things such as, "We LEARNED, and it was FUN!!!!"
And that's when I realized that I'd lost my focus on enjoyable learning in the midst of all the busywork that I've allowed to pile up on myself and my emotional issues that I've worsened through a lack of sleep. I feel renewed and inspired.
All of this through the fog of my brain cloggage. Not bad.
Recently, I've realized that an alarming number of my students believe identifying parts of speech in a sentence consists of spinning a mental roulette wheel and screaming out whatever pops up. This has led to my taking a step back and working with some admittedly boring grammar worksheets. Working through a scintillating packet on adjectives was on the agenda for the last thirty minutes today. Between my clogged sinuses (and brain, it seems) an their end-of-the-day attention spans, things were not going well. The class is blissfully small (twenty student), so it certainly could have been worse, but still, this was far from a decent lesson.
Finally, I stood up and began calling my students out on their distracted behavior and began amping up the pace. Then, one of the strongest students suddenly blurted out, "I heard someone farted in first period math." In the midst of my jovial (because I can't help but love these kids) frustration, I put that statement up on the board and exclaimed that we would be identifying the parts of speak for each word in this sentence. Amazingly, the next seven minutes flew by as students yelled out answers (often incorrectly, so I forced them to wait ten seconds before answering), and I decorated the statement with boxes and squiggles and an image of a stick figure farting, all the while yelling (lovingly) back at my students. By the end, students were spontaneously exclaiming things such as, "We LEARNED, and it was FUN!!!!"
And that's when I realized that I'd lost my focus on enjoyable learning in the midst of all the busywork that I've allowed to pile up on myself and my emotional issues that I've worsened through a lack of sleep. I feel renewed and inspired.
All of this through the fog of my brain cloggage. Not bad.