Wake Up!

The general public usually does not know what goes into the implementation of a home run winning lesson plan. It takes knowing your subject matter inside and out (a feat within itself), it takes knowing many various teaching strategies in order to link the right strategies with the content, and it takes an inate knowledge of the education needs for each and every student in your group. Finally, it takes knowing something about assessment strategies so that real data can be obtained to measure student progress.

However, none of my actions to plan appropriate lessons matter if my students are asleep. It can be very frustrating to be fully engrossed in teaching your plan, look out across the room, and see two or three nodding off. Yes, I’ve had my share of sleepy ones as well.

My first reaction has been one of anger. How dare they fall asleep during my lesson?!

Next I decided that perhaps it was me. Was I really that boring? I poured over my plans and looked for weak areas. Did I include enough activity for students in my plans or were they merely sitting in their seats watching me? What was the level of the “boring meter” regarding the content the lesson covered, and how could I eliminate the boring factor?

Even with all of my introspection I still had sleepy students. I’ve now come to the conclusion that it isn’t always me. There are outside environmental factors that determine how my students react in the classroom, and while I cannot control these factors I still have to address them in a manner designed to maximize the learning in my classes.

Outside environmental factors include:

*In most homes both parents work and have a set time to be at their jobs. It’s hard to get a family up and ready to go all at the same time and often what happens is some children manage to get their clothes on and fall back to sleep while their parents finish getting ready. There is no breakfast since a large majority of kids eat at school now. Once in the car many kids fall asleep again and often still asleep as they are hustled out of the car at school. They stumble into the building sometimes a good hour to 30 minutes before the school day actually begins. Even after eating a school breakfast many sit 15-20 minutes in the hallway before homeroom begins…..just long enough to nod off again.

*Some children, even the nine and ten year olds I have taught serve as caregivers for younger siblings in the afternoon and evenings. There is no time for homework or even fun sometimes because every minute is looking after little ones, preparing a meal, or cleaning the house.

*Many children are burdened with schedules that would make you and I cringe. Their afternoons are full of various lessons or practices. Sometimes ball practice of some sort last as late as 9 o’clock for some teams.

*More and more families are out and about during the evening. Go into any restaurant at 10 o’clock in my neighborhood and you see several children eating dinner with their parents.

*I often use writing assignments during Language Arts to gather more incite into the lives of my students, and what they write is very revealing. They are so honest….sometimes painfully honest. From a simple prompt such as “How I Spent My Afternoon…” I find out that many of my students are visiting the local Walmart at nine, ten, eleven and even after midnite. Some wind up with a parent who is working the late shift. One little boy plays video games every evening till midnight in his Dad’s office and then has an hour long drive home before bedtime. Another student wrote about sitting at the jail with her aunt waiting on the release of her mother. She had been picked up for drugs that morning.

*Many children don’t have a bedtime. If they do, it’s much too late. Students report they are up till all hours doing whatever they want to.

*Some children report they do have a bedtime, but once their parent goes to bed they get back up to watch the television in their room, play on their computer, read, eat, etc.

So I continue to have sleepy babies sitting in my room. One way I have attempted to improve this situation is through the use of lively music and dancing. When things seem to be getting bogged down and I notice a few are getting droopy-eyed we DANCE and DANCE, and DANCE!

Yep, we DANCE. We’ll take a break and I play some lively songs and in order to get everyone involved I’ll act as silly as I have to. They think I’m crazy the first few times, but when they see how much fun it can be they join in. No, there are no video tapes of me DANCING….thank the Lord, so don’t ask.

Once the break is over we are much more ready to tackle the content at hand and more learning can take place…….and there’s nothing like letting others see you in a silly dance move to build camaraderie among members of a group.

Some songs we have used are

Little Eva's Locomotion

Play That Funky Music by Wild Cherry

Chubby Checker's Let's Twist Again

Twist and Shout with The Beatles

Shout with the Isley Brothers

Marcia Griffiths Electric Boogie (Slide)

Cha Cha Slide

Pink's Get the Party Started

And don’t discount Brain Gym for improving the alertness of droopy students.

Can you think of some other lively tunes we could use?

The Good and Bad...A Week Before Christmas Break

The Bad…..they’re dropping like flies. Some sort of stomach ailment is traveling around giving bad tummies, fevers, and headaches. I wrote so many passes to the office this morning I was afraid somebody would think I was trying to empty my room. I’ve been on the fringes of the travelin’ crud myself, but since it’s a near impossibility to secure a sub I’m trudging on……

The Good…presents! So far I’ve amassed lots of sweet homemade cards, hugs, a mini-snowglobe and bear figurine from the dollar store, raspberry vanilla and cherry blossom products from Bath and Body Works, a bag of fruit, and a nice watch. One gift was particularly unusual…..I received a battery operated pencil sharpener in the shape of a monster. You put your pencil in his mouth to sharpen it. When you’re done he burps. The young man that gave it to me said, “I gave it to you because you have a good sense of humor.” Another student spoke up and said, “Yeah, you’d get it….you’d think it was funny.” I did get it. I did think it was funny. What my gift giver didn’t realize is the best gift he gave me was telling me he thinks I have a good sense of humor. My students understand me. After the thirtieth burp, however, I don’t know if my sense of humor will still be intact.

The Bad…tempers are short. Kids who have tolerated each other suddenly have had enough and are telling each other off right and left. This leads to shoving desks, shoving chairs and shoving each other. Name calling is high on the activity list, and being in a state of constant alert for everyone’s safety is a little exhausting.

The Good…I have earned a new reputation among students, especially the boys, as a tolerable linebacker. Earlier this week one of my young men became a bit too aggressive during a friendly game of football. He didn’t like the way a play had gone and pushed another boy rather hard two or three times. I began walking towards them telling the first boy to stop several times. The boy being pushed puts his hands up and backed away, but the pusher kept after him. I basically ended up tackling the pusher from behind and held him in a restraint hold to get him to calm down. Once things calmed down one of the boys hollered, “Nice tackle, Elementaryhistoryteacher! Ya wanna play?” The news must have gotten around because several students in other grades mentioned hearing about my “tackle”. I won’t hold my breath….I don’t think the Atlanta Falcons will be calling anytime soon.

The Bad…coordinating a pizza order for 100 students for our non-party, movie watching event on Friday, sweating out the delivery of our presents we ordered for students on-line, end of term paperwork, grading, coordinating exams when students are absent from school more than they are in, and adding the extra load of completing 96 certificates for students throughout the entire school who had exemplary behavior during September, October, and November. These were awarded at our PTSO meeting Tuesday night. They took me three days to complete. How do I get roped into these things?

The Good…Our reading teachers have determined our fourth grade has risen an entire level in reading scores since the beginning of the year. Approximately 90 of 100 fourth graders have 10 Accelerated Reader points or more. This is fantastic since none of our students had 10 points during the first term…..our reading teachers pushed the program, motivated the kids, and they surpassed our wildest dreams. In 9 weeks many of my homeroom students have amassed 20, 30, and even 40 points. Most important of all we have noticed that fluency is increasing and comprehension is improving. What a Christmas present!

The two highest students are in my homeroom. One has 69 points while the other has 70. These points for students represent many minutes of independent reading. Today we recognized the top three in each homeroom with pizza. It was nice to have this small group for a special lunch in one the classrooms with us to acknowledge their hard work. Here is a couple of pictures of our top students.



The young man on the left is my "pencil sharpener guy".



S0….it’s finally here. The final day before break, and I haven’t even started my shopping yet.

The Carnival of Education---Edition 97 is up over at the Education Wonks. Go see the best and brightest in the edublogosphere!

What a Week!

It's been one of those weeks.

Students have been very, shall we say, energetic to say the least. I don't normally have to call administration to help me with discipline matters but this week I called twice. Knowing that I don't call that often they came a runnin'. One young man decided to lay in the hallway when he learned that he would be staying in study hall instead of going out for recess. His offense? He head butted a classmate, he opened up the hand sanitizer and let it flow on my classroom carpet, he told me to shut the f- up, and call me crazy, but I can't allow students to lay in the hallway. Non teachers would probably say, "Oh let him...he'll eventually get tired and come in the room." It doesn't work that way. If I leave a student alone in the hallway and something happens I'm responsible. It was bad enough that he wouldn't get up....it was a definite write-up when he told me to shut up along with the f-word.

Earlier in the week another student decided I wasn't lining up for lunch fast enough and he wanted to leave the room. Out he goes with me saying, "Come back", "Stop", "Don't". Once he was three-fourths of the way down the hall I gave the ultimatim, "You've left me no chance. I'm calling." When I have a problem with kids I give them two choices---one choice is the behavior I want them to exhibit while the other is calling the AP or resource officer. Most of the time they choose the behavior I want because I'm consistent and they know I will call everytime. Well, this particular young man turned the corner and at that point I didn't know where he was. I called the office. Luckily he had decided to sit on the bench around the corner, but when the rest of the class and I reached his spot he still wouldn't go with me. The AP had reached us by then and he handled it from there. I really love that guy and I hate for other educators who don't have supportive administrators.

We've had some wonderful lessons this week regarding Daniel Boone and the settlement of Kentucky and Tennessee. We've discussed the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition. In order to review on Friday I drew an impromtu map on the board and labled the original 13 states, the Appalachian Mountains, the Northwest Territory, the Mississippi, and the Louisiana Purchase. I also indicated British Canada and Spanish territory in the west and Florida. As I reviewed the settlers crossing the mountains and spreading to the frontier I drew arrows showing their movement. As I reviewed the Louisiana Purchase I drew more arrows crossing the Mississippi. One young man commented, "Finally! Our map is beginning to look like the United States should."

My main focus of Friday's lesson was the Battle of Tippecanoe. So I asked students to look at the map and remind me about what was going on with Native Americans. They correctly stated that as settlers moved westward the Native Americans were forced to move westward and give up their land. This placed us at the starting point I wanted. I used the fact that some Native Americans got tired of being pushed around and they wanted to make a stand. Enter Tecumseh and the Prophet to our story.

I teach this battle because I can bring in the fact that many Americans felt the British Canadians encouraged Native Americans to fight the frontier settlers and provided weapons through trade. I asked students, "Why do you think the British were doing this?" I was very please when a large majority of them assumed that the British would like to get their hands back on the United States.

At any rate by bringing in the British interference with Native Americans I have set the stage to begin talking about the impressment of soldiers during the early 1800s and will set up the causes of the War of 1812....one of my favorites.

Thank goodness "Turn Off the TV" week is over. We are working on an author study using Roald Dahl books and as a kick off we had watched the first part of Matilda. Now maybe we can finish it. Student groups will begin this week working on The Twits, The Magic Finger, and George's Marvelous Medicine in small groups. They will read a few pages each day and draw a symbol to represent what they read. We will be comparing and contrasting the characters and themes. I am also reading The BFG aloud. Our chapter from Friday detailed what the BFG (Big Friendly Giant) drinks-----a fizzy drink called Frobscottle which is similar to Coke but instead of the bubbles doing up they go down in the glass and form foam in the bottom. As I read the chapter's description of how Frobscottle works on the body some of my smarties starting giggling. I love to look up and see those "Ah ha!" moments come across their faces. You see, the bubbles in Coke travel up so in the body and escape as burps. The bubbles in Frobscottle travel downward and escape through the.... well...let's just say you end up with fanny burps. The BFG has quite a way with words and calls the Frobscottle results "whizzpoppers". The kids talked about whizzpopping the rest of the day.

Yes, it's been quite a week.