Friday November 28, 2008The end of a long week…
(I've added some more pictures from our Seville trip, just to help break up a long blog entry...=] They are not new from this week)
Today I finished my fractions lesson in math. I kind of gave a final assessment today. I would have liked to call it a test – but IB doesn’t really believe in tests. Anyway, it will help me assess what they have learned as well as my teaching. In the assessment there were questions on using drawings to represent fractions, work with improper fractions and mixed numbers, simplifying and ordering so the questions fit perfectly with the objectives I was trying to accomplish over the last week.
In the afternoon I taught a two hour POI block on formal and informal writing. Ms. Lisa did a formal observation on this lesson and gave me feedback at the end of the day. The central idea being addressed in this lesson was “write a persuasive letter to the government (formal) and one to your parents (informal) so that they will not force you to evacuate. To introduce this assignment I did a one hour lesson on formal and informal writing, and then the students were allowed to start their writing. 
I created my lesson using the SMART notebook software. After the students came in from lunch I had the question “Why do we write letters?” written on the SMART board. We brainstormed possible reasons for writing letters. Some answers were to communicate, express an idea/opinion/attitude, to ask for something, invite someone to something or thank someone. The next slide I created was entitled Formal Writing. I explained that this meant that it was very professional, like a business letter. Underneath the title I had a list of qualifications that were necessary in a formal letter but there were covered up by a psychedelic highlighter. If the students could identify one of the qualifications on the list they could come up to the SMART board and erase/”rub out” the highlighting to reveal the answer. For example a few of the qualifications were: the letter needs to be typed, it needs a letterhead, the letter must have the date, your address and the address of the recipient, it must be polite, well presented, clear and to the point, and there should be no slang, contractions, emotive language, questions or spelling errors. The students were extremely excited. Its amazing how you can totally engage students by incorporating erasing of colored marker into an academic lesson…cool, I’ll take it. The next slide was titled Informal Writing. The students had to complete a similar task, revealing certain things that would be acceptable to have in an informal letter. 
In the next slide of the lesson I had a list of phrases that you might use in an informal letter. The students had to match the phrase with their meaning in the adjacent column. For example the students could match “could you do something for me” with “asking a favor,” or “did you know that” with “to share information.” To complete the matching I had the students raise their hand if they spotted a match, I then proceeded to call on a student and throw the SMART board pen to them across the room to them. They caught the marker and drew a connecting line on the board between the two phrases. The idea of a teacher tossing markers around the classroom to the students skyrocketed the already high student participation. Even the students who never participate were totally engaged in the lesson. This just goes to prove that if you use effective age appropriate strategies you can make any lesson engaging and active…even learning about different writing styles à yawn. After the lesson today I was really excited, its days like today that make me re-think my decision of not teaching right away. I think I really could have fun given the flexibility of my own classroom. Not quite sure Ms. Lisa was crazy about me chucking markers across the room though =] haha. 
So…total bummer about going to Morocco. Dawn, Brittany and I had plans this weekend to go to Morocco for three days. It sounded like an amazing trip. Meals and a four star hotel were included with tours and shopping around three cities. Luckily we had not paid in advance for the trip. We had all been watching the weather and thunderstorms and heavy rain were listed as the weekend forecast in Tangier. We were contemplating still going and chalking it up as one wet adventure, but we opted to make the ‘adult’ decision and not go. We had heard that the sewer system in Morocco isn’t the greatest and it is really easy for cities to flood. In addition, we did not want to get stuck in Morocco in traffic or not be able to make the ferry back to Gibraltar on Sunday to make it to school on Monday…that would have been a disaster! We are hoping that maybe we will be able to organize a day trip or something there before we leave with some staff members. It won’t as cool as the three day trip, but it would still be nice to go since we are so close. 
Our plan B included going to get coffee with Mireille tonight then laying low at home. It was actually really nice. I have been able to catch up on some blog entries as well as get a lot of grading done that I had to do this weekend. No idea how I would have gotten it all done had I not got home from Morocco until six o’clock on Sunday. I graded thirteen math packets that I had handed out as a challenge for my advanced math students. I also graded twenty fraction assessments and made comments for editing on twenty-six formal and informal letters. 
**There were some perks to grading tonight**
Informal and Formal letter examples:
Informal Example #1:
Dear Mum and Dad,
I really miss you! Everyone here is being mean to all the evacuees. Me and Max were one of the last children to be picked. Luckily in the end, someone just wanted one girl or one buy. We tried and in the end, the lady took us both in. They own a barbershop and sometimes they let us help.
My new school is ok. One of the kids in my class is Kate, remember Kate? We’ve become best friends. There are some awful bullies in the class under me, but above Max, Guess what!? Max skipped a grade!!! Isn’t that exciting? He is now only two classes below me!
How is Dad in the Navy? Has he come back? Is he still alive? Please tell me!
When are you coming??? I really miss you!
Love, Emily
P.S. How are you doing with the shelter? Are you SAFE?
Informal Example #2 (Haha, Jamal overdid the informal lingo a bit…but I think he grasped the concept ;)
Dear Mum,
I just so so so so don’t want to go! It makes me feel sad, miserable and stuff like that! I’d feel like killin’ myself, besides I mean I’m sure I’ll be safe with u. There isn’t like a big reason why I gotta go! Ahh! This make me so afraid.
Love,
Jamal Shagig
PS: Please say no!
**The funny thing is that this example is from an amazing student with very proper English…he meant for the letter to sound like this**
Formal Example #1:
12 May 1947
Mr. John Spencer
Organization of evacuees
London Government
39, Pembrook Avenue
CHISWICK
Dear Sir,
I would be grateful if you would allow me to stay and live with my parents.
I would like to stay because I would feel uncomfortable leaving London and my parents will be in danger.
Also, I hate the thought of maybe living with someone who doesn’t like me.
Thank you for considering me. I hope that this letter will change your mind about evacuees.
Yours Faithfully,
(signed name)
Ellie Perry
I also got quite a laugh from one of my answers on the extended math packet, Dan à you will enjoy this.
I asked the students to create their own word problem for 525 ÷ 21 and then solve it.
This is what Andrew wrote (he is a very bright student and one of the class clowns)
“100 people are in a school. 525 people are wearing school jumpers (aka sweatshirts). 21 people are just wearing the shirts. How many people are wearing raincoats?”
Hahahaha. Oh, Andrew. I have no idea if this was a joke, or he was serious, or didn’t think I would read it or what, but Dawn and I laughed pretty hard about it.
…and now I’m going to head to bed. Funny how I am most productive on a Friday night when nothing is due the next day, seems a little bit backwards.
Tomorrow we hope to go out for breakfast, maybe stop by the Christmas bazaar at SIS in the afternoon and then head to Estapona for the night. Not a bad plan B for the weekend...=]
Today I finished my fractions lesson in math. I kind of gave a final assessment today. I would have liked to call it a test – but IB doesn’t really believe in tests. Anyway, it will help me assess what they have learned as well as my teaching. In the assessment there were questions on using drawings to represent fractions, work with improper fractions and mixed numbers, simplifying and ordering so the questions fit perfectly with the objectives I was trying to accomplish over the last week.
In the afternoon I taught a two hour POI block on formal and informal writing. Ms. Lisa did a formal observation on this lesson and gave me feedback at the end of the day. The central idea being addressed in this lesson was “write a persuasive letter to the government (formal) and one to your parents (informal) so that they will not force you to evacuate. To introduce this assignment I did a one hour lesson on formal and informal writing, and then the students were allowed to start their writing. I created my lesson using the SMART notebook software. After the students came in from lunch I had the question “Why do we write letters?” written on the SMART board. We brainstormed possible reasons for writing letters. Some answers were to communicate, express an idea/opinion/attitude, to ask for something, invite someone to something or thank someone. The next slide I created was entitled Formal Writing. I explained that this meant that it was very professional, like a business letter. Underneath the title I had a list of qualifications that were necessary in a formal letter but there were covered up by a psychedelic highlighter. If the students could identify one of the qualifications on the list they could come up to the SMART board and erase/”rub out” the highlighting to reveal the answer. For example a few of the qualifications were: the letter needs to be typed, it needs a letterhead, the letter must have the date, your address and the address of the recipient, it must be polite, well presented, clear and to the point, and there should be no slang, contractions, emotive language, questions or spelling errors. The students were extremely excited. Its amazing how you can totally engage students by incorporating erasing of colored marker into an academic lesson…cool, I’ll take it. The next slide was titled Informal Writing. The students had to complete a similar task, revealing certain things that would be acceptable to have in an informal letter. In the next slide of the lesson I had a list of phrases that you might use in an informal letter. The students had to match the phrase with their meaning in the adjacent column. For example the students could match “could you do something for me” with “asking a favor,” or “did you know that” with “to share information.” To complete the matching I had the students raise their hand if they spotted a match, I then proceeded to call on a student and throw the SMART board pen to them across the room to them. They caught the marker and drew a connecting line on the board between the two phrases. The idea of a teacher tossing markers around the classroom to the students skyrocketed the already high student participation. Even the students who never participate were totally engaged in the lesson. This just goes to prove that if you use effective age appropriate strategies you can make any lesson engaging and active…even learning about different writing styles à yawn. After the lesson today I was really excited, its days like today that make me re-think my decision of not teaching right away. I think I really could have fun given the flexibility of my own classroom. Not quite sure Ms. Lisa was crazy about me chucking markers across the room though =] haha. So…total bummer about going to Morocco. Dawn, Brittany and I had plans this weekend to go to Morocco for three days. It sounded like an amazing trip. Meals and a four star hotel were included with tours and shopping around three cities. Luckily we had not paid in advance for the trip. We had all been watching the weather and thunderstorms and heavy rain were listed as the weekend forecast in Tangier. We were contemplating still going and chalking it up as one wet adventure, but we opted to make the ‘adult’ decision and not go. We had heard that the sewer system in Morocco isn’t the greatest and it is really easy for cities to flood. In addition, we did not want to get stuck in Morocco in traffic or not be able to make the ferry back to Gibraltar on Sunday to make it to school on Monday…that would have been a disaster! We are hoping that maybe we will be able to organize a day trip or something there before we leave with some staff members. It won’t as cool as the three day trip, but it would still be nice to go since we are so close. Our plan B included going to get coffee with Mireille tonight then laying low at home. It was actually really nice. I have been able to catch up on some blog entries as well as get a lot of grading done that I had to do this weekend. No idea how I would have gotten it all done had I not got home from Morocco until six o’clock on Sunday. I graded thirteen math packets that I had handed out as a challenge for my advanced math students. I also graded twenty fraction assessments and made comments for editing on twenty-six formal and informal letters. **There were some perks to grading tonight**Informal and Formal letter examples:
Informal Example #1:
Dear Mum and Dad,
I really miss you! Everyone here is being mean to all the evacuees. Me and Max were one of the last children to be picked. Luckily in the end, someone just wanted one girl or one buy. We tried and in the end, the lady took us both in. They own a barbershop and sometimes they let us help.
My new school is ok. One of the kids in my class is Kate, remember Kate? We’ve become best friends. There are some awful bullies in the class under me, but above Max, Guess what!? Max skipped a grade!!! Isn’t that exciting? He is now only two classes below me!
How is Dad in the Navy? Has he come back? Is he still alive? Please tell me!
When are you coming??? I really miss you!
Love, Emily
P.S. How are you doing with the shelter? Are you SAFE?
Informal Example #2 (Haha, Jamal overdid the informal lingo a bit…but I think he grasped the concept ;)
Dear Mum,
I just so so so so don’t want to go! It makes me feel sad, miserable and stuff like that! I’d feel like killin’ myself, besides I mean I’m sure I’ll be safe with u. There isn’t like a big reason why I gotta go! Ahh! This make me so afraid.
Love,
Jamal Shagig
PS: Please say no!
**The funny thing is that this example is from an amazing student with very proper English…he meant for the letter to sound like this**
Formal Example #1:
12 May 1947
Mr. John Spencer
Organization of evacuees
London Government
39, Pembrook Avenue
CHISWICK
Dear Sir,
I would be grateful if you would allow me to stay and live with my parents.
I would like to stay because I would feel uncomfortable leaving London and my parents will be in danger.
Also, I hate the thought of maybe living with someone who doesn’t like me.
Thank you for considering me. I hope that this letter will change your mind about evacuees.
Yours Faithfully,
(signed name)
Ellie Perry
I also got quite a laugh from one of my answers on the extended math packet, Dan à you will enjoy this.
I asked the students to create their own word problem for 525 ÷ 21 and then solve it.
This is what Andrew wrote (he is a very bright student and one of the class clowns)
“100 people are in a school. 525 people are wearing school jumpers (aka sweatshirts). 21 people are just wearing the shirts. How many people are wearing raincoats?”
Hahahaha. Oh, Andrew. I have no idea if this was a joke, or he was serious, or didn’t think I would read it or what, but Dawn and I laughed pretty hard about it.
…and now I’m going to head to bed. Funny how I am most productive on a Friday night when nothing is due the next day, seems a little bit backwards.
Tomorrow we hope to go out for breakfast, maybe stop by the Christmas bazaar at SIS in the afternoon and then head to Estapona for the night. Not a bad plan B for the weekend...=]
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