Friday, November 9, 2007

Crazy

A few things that are crazy right now:

... teaching
Science (weather)
      • My own unit plan
      • Culmination (hopefully) to happen next week
      • Videotaping my lesson for viewing by my MSU classmates
Math
      • Pretty structured
      • Not as many fun activities as I would like
Phonics/reading vocabulary groups
      • I get very little preparation for this
      • Kids don't like to work well together
Behavior management
      • My students are very challenging, and oppositional
      • I am going to substitute on my own for the first time on Thursday morning...I'm nervous because the kids are so different every day, and have already chased at least 1 substitute away by being so awful.
      • I started "making deals" with students, encouraging positive behaviors by providing an incentive if they succeed in the behavior for a slotted amount of time. (i.e. If one student calls out a lot in class, his deal is to get something if he can go a whole day without shouting out.
Personal goals (as assessed by my msu teacher...)
      • Behavior management - finding creative ways to include all students and have them focused
      • Deliberately using assessments (formal and informal) to modify my teaching
      • Incorporating and including diverse learners (especially when the extremes are present in the class)
... MSU coursework
Inclusion project re: a child with visual impairments in a mainstream classroom.
      • Interviews
      • Observations
      • HUGE paper at the end exposing my findings
Project re: child with a language problem (writing expression)
      • Observations
      • Interviews
      • Research (for my problem and those of 2 of my classmates)
IEP observation
      • 6 page report re: what happened
Group Inservice (Professional Development) presentation
      • 1-2 hour presentation to "general education teachers" re: having a deaf/hard of hearing student in their classroom
      • 5 members need to collaborate in order to present this
Paper re: my learning breakdowns and development of my learning during the course of the semester

and I think I'm getting sick again....



Positive craziness:
At MSU last week they had an outreach called The Price of Life where they talked about the international slave trade and attempted to raise money for the International Justice Mission. As far as I have heard (this was as of Wednesday night) there have been 55 people who accepted Christ as their personal savior this week! This is very exciting! The angels are rejoicing. :-)

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