Online book study?

I've had a "d'oh" moment...

Let me preface this post with a bit of background...

I am an avid reader of fiction and comprehend fiction quite well, but struggle a lot with comprehension of difficult texts. I've known this for quite a while... in high school, I was in the single digit page numbers of Beowulf until the day we tested on it.. and in college, I was *so* eternally grateful for Monarch notes because they paraphrased the text into contempory language.

Last week, at our AVID summer institute, one of our assignments was to read an article about college readiness vs college preparedness. After struggling quite a while to read the edu-speak, the article became crystal clear during our group discussion of the material. This cycle repeated itself later on in the week when I had to read an editoral about 9/11 and we discussed it in a Socratic Seminar. These two examples really illustrated the power of discussion for deeper understanding.

Fast forward to this week... I was reading on AtoZTeacherForums and read a great post on "must-reads" for teachers. I started looking at my own professional library, and realized that I have many of the must-haves, but I haven't read them all and the few I have read were a while back. Coupled with my "a-ha" moment of last week, I decided to search out an online book study group, only to find that they really don't exist :(

So... the question at hand is...
1) Do you know of somewhere I should look? OR
2) Would any of you be interested in doing a book study?

Have a happy 4th!

Braindump of ideas...

I just needed to get these out on "paper" in order to process them... and to make sure I don't forget them!! :)

* I really do like the idea of a wiki or blog for the kids to post daily or weekly or chapter summaries... Not sure how to implement this though, nor how to grade it. I don't want to change around my entire class website either, so I need to figure out how to implement it within that structure... Some grading ideas can be found here

* Another teacher I know has the kids create a study guide throughout the year with the thought of the AP exam in May. She has them take their chapter examples and a summary sheet of each chpater and compile them into a notebook. I like this idea - to build a study guide throughout the year. However I'm wondering what else should be included. Should it have some basic notes/instructions?? Some questions from the textbook? Vocab? If so, would this all be bundled as a "packet" handed out at the beginning of the chapter? Would kids regard this as busy work?

* Just ran across another interesting idea regarding partner quizzes. If the kids have their homework completed on time, they can earn the priviledge of taking a partner quiz. Of course, homework isn't required in my class, but I still thought it was an interesting idea to have the kids earn it.

* Second semester this year, I let the kids do test corrections for 1 week after the test was graded. They had to earn the opportunity by showing evidence of having done the homework or review. They had to explain why they messed up and then rework the problem correctly. I really liked this and plan to continue it. It had built-in remediation because the kids had to do their homework (if they hadn't already), plus they had to self-assess their errors.

* Speaking of HW, I was nervous about not requiring HW at the beginning. However, most kids really matured over the year! I still had some kids that wouldn't do it and their grades were low (I've never had this rate of D/F grades), BUT, I also had kids that went from minimial homework and C grades to almost every problem and high Bs because they had more control of their grade. By doing the homework, they did better on the quizzes (since the quizzes were from the HW). Overall, I think by giving the kids more control, they benefited more than if I had required it. While I hate that I had kids that did poorly and never learned that lesson, I would rather them learn it in HS than when it costs them a lot of money in college.

* I plan to give up more control this year and be more of a faciliator than a lecturer. I tried this 2nd semester and started most topics out with an activity that walked the kids through the gist of the topic. They had to read, discuss, write, and be more active in their learning overall. One kid summed it up when he said "I like doing the activities first before you teach the material - it gives my brain something to attach the lecture to!" Wow - what a profound statment! Making connections really helps material stick in their heads rather than just "renting" the material til the quiz/test.

* This year I had study groups for the kids to work with. This year, I think I want to modify that, either by assigning them to new seating charts (and new partners/triplets) every 9 weeks or something. The groups did not work out how I wanted them to. I had hoped they would get together outside of class, and some did in partners, but not as a group overall.

* Back to the online issue... I would really like to incorporate more online learning. I did online review quizzes on a weekly basis and I did like that more than doing them in-class. With the online feature, they could call up their buddy, talk through a problem, use their book/notes and the instant feedback was great for the kids. Some kids really preferred to do them in class, but I hated the time constraint that imposed and online gave them the freedom to really understand what hte question was asking and reach out for help. I would like to increase the online component using webquests, stat software, etc.

* Just found this website... Interesting review games, PPT timers... check it out :) http://people.uncw.edu/ertzbergerj/ppt_games.html

I'm sure I'll add more later...

Class Blogs and Other stuff

Yesterday was my official last day of school - woot! After an uneventful Friday (which was wonderful after Thursday's fiasco!), I spent the weekend cleaning the backyard, going to a retirement party, etc. Yesterday I was pretty sore from the yard work, so packing up my room was a SLOW process :)

I leave for the reading on Thursday, so today I ran errands... bought a new suitcase, a few new clothes, and assorted other random items. Speaking of random... does anyone know where to buy "Key Lime Pie Mints" - they are the green and white swirled mints. I love those and wanted to have some in my purse for the trip.

While catching up on my blog reader this evening, I ran across this comment:

"I taught English, so we’re talking two different beasts here, but something I tried that went over with moderate success was having kids post class notes to our class wiki on a weekly, not daily, basis. Each semester I’d ask the kids to pair up and I’d assign each pair a week of the semester – you’re Sept 9, you’re Sept 16, etc. – for which they were responsible for keeping detailed records of class discussion, lecture, activities, etc. By the following Tuesday, they had to post the class notes to the course wiki."

Does anyone else do this? I'm loving the idea of having a pair of kids post a weekly summary for the class! Any ideas on format, how to grade, etc?

Can I Rewind?!?!

Tomorrow is the last day of school with kiddos, so today we took final exams in the odd hours.

First hour goes by smoothly, I'm on plan so not much to do there... renew my teaching certificate online (only took 1 phone call to the state department to figure it out!), run a test over to in-house, visit with our district director for AVID, make copies, etc. All the makings of a good day :)

Third hour comes and I get the kiddos started on their test, all is fine. After their test, they say it's pretty easy. Repeat this for fifth hour.

After school, the "sh*t hits the fan" so to speak :) I go to the scantron machine to grade my finals around 3:15ish and there's a kid using the copy machine. I tell her she's not supposed to be using it, only teachers. Because I got sidetracked, I go off and leave the answer keys to the final on the scantron machine. I don't notice this until about 30 minutes later - OMG, adrenline starts pumping, I'm freaking out. I run over to the teacher workroom, they aren't there.. holy crap! I am going to have to go home and write new finals for geometry and go to Kinkos to make copies for all of the other Geometry teachers (common finals) - total freakout!

I go to the principal's office, afraid to tell many people what I've done. I'm a veteran teacher, pretty respected most days, and for me to lose a final is not the norm at all. I can't find the secretary, but instead I find our department curriculm coach (who is retiring) and her replacement. I sit down with them and about to burst into tears - this is SO unlike me to lose anything! The new curriculum person (a teacher I've known for years), goes with me to find the girl that was using the copier and she had already gone, but the teacher she was helping was still there, so we were able to get her phone number. The girl remembered a male teacher going in there and described his clothing. I went back to the office and asked the asst principal to show me the security tapes so I could figure out who it was. After about 30 minutes, we figured it out and the secretary let me into the teacher's room and thankfully he had picked them up and put them in a drawer.

My heart is STILL pounding!!! What a day!!! I want to show all of the helpers a token of appreciation, so I'm grabbing a small giftcard from a popular drink spot to tell then "Thanks for saving my rear today!!"

*Sigh* Calgon - Take me Away!!!

GRRR - Vent :)

I hate when you have something to say but can't! I have a huge frustration that I would love to write about here, but although I have never said where I teach, etc, this blog just isn't anonymous enough for me to feel comfortable saying what I want to say. DH doesn't truly understand, although he is fully willing to listen, and most of my friends are busy since its a holiday weekend.

*sigh*

Mad Minutes

I am currently grading an Algebra Review quiz that I gave my Geometry students. It floors me how many students miss problems due to integer arthimetic errors. So I've decided to do "mad minutes" in Alg 2 next year. I don't know how many of you remember Mad Minutes from gradeschool, but I'm bringing them back heheh... Here's a link to an Excel document that creates these... Mr. Beach's Spreadsheet

However, how do I grade them? I guess I need to reach out to some elementary buddies and ask them :) I'm thinking maybe some kind of team competition where the prizes are based on most improved team and highest scoring team per quarter.

Ideas welcome!

Finding time for your family

I struggle sometimes with balance. Sometimes I focus so much on my students and school that I don't focus enough on my friends and family and this has been an ongoing argument for years. We have another couple that we try to go out with at least once a month and this past week, the guys set up a dinner date for us. We went out to eat and then to the new Star Trek film. OMG - what an amazing movie!! In fact, it was so awesome that we are taking MIL and FIL to the movies tonight to see it again for Mother's Day.

It's been such a crazy weekend... twice to the movies, seeing our moms, going to a real "biker" wedding (college roomie got married and her hubby is a biker - talk about a cultural experience!)

On a different note, hubby paid me a high compliment yesterday at my mom's. For the mothers, I made gift baskets of a variety of soaps I made. Hubby had gone to the restroom and later on, he made the comment to my mom about putting the soap in the bathrooms because he's gotten used to using my soap and it was weird to not have it there :) I am still basking in that praise! I assumed he used my soap simply to be nice, not because he really liked it. heheh

Happy Mother's Day to all!