Its now 2010.....!

Happy New Year to you all ! I hope 2010 is a new year of fine health, happiness, Love, prosperity and smarter, superbly behaved, higher-test-scoring students for you all !

Have a good first week back at school !

Almost a "new year," will you be ready to go ?

One and a half more kid days until they amble away until "next year." Do you have your lesson plans all ready to go for when you and "them" get back to school "next year?" I do. My first week of January lesson plans are all ready to go, no prep to do when Jan. 4 rolls around and my students and I are sitting there staring at each other.

Hope your preparations for the holiday season are going well ! Remember, take time for YOU. Just YOU !

Thanks for reading this blog ! Your comments are welcome !

Student activity: Going over work....remember THIS?

Going over work in a class after a break can be a chore. Prior to our Thanksgiving Week off, we had begun our Islam unit. I showed them a video lecture and students were to circle answers on their worksheet ( I find such a "guided" activity works best for seventh graders who are not used to, cannot or will not taking notes from lecture or video activities, etc. The way this works is, the worksheet is passed out prior to viewing the video and students are to quietly read over the questions so they have an idea of what to listen for. [ Where do these video worksheets come from? These worksheets are created by me, the teacher, after watching the video and taking notes.] Each question has three to four answer choices. Some questions have but a single answer, others have multiple answers. Anyhow, as the video is viewed or the lecture is presented, students simply circle or check the answer choice or choices. Later, we go over them and students get some activity to reinforce the data presented in the video or lecture.

Example question: At the time of Muhammad, many Arabs were polytheistic. This means they believed or worshipped _?_. the goddess Polly one god many gods Jehovah

When we go over the video/lecture worksheet, I might randomly call on students to read the question and give the class the answer(s). However, since we did this activity almost two weeks ago, I have made index cards with the question and answer(s) on them, to pass out to students to stand and read aloud to their classmates. This gives most students a chance to get up out of their seats and give an academic verbal response to their classmates. I could also make up a set of cards with just the questions on them, and a set of cards with the answers and students have to pair up in front of the class to read aloud their question and its answer(s).

Next, students will put vocabulary terms (such as polytheism) in the vocabulary section their interactive notebooks,( three column format: vocabulary / definition / illustration ), then create a T - chart using other questions about the Prophet Muhammad and the main tenets of Islam as discussed in this video lecture. And hopefully review and study this data!

Hopefully, this will help start us on the week and get my students minds back to our topic of study.

What do you think? What strategies do you employ to get your students using academic responses and go over work ?

Up and outta their seats, Vocabulary Activity

I teach junior high. Many of our students cannot, should not be seated all the time. So, get them moving. One strategy I employ is with vocabulary. I have a numbered list of vocabulary terms on the board. Students set up their paper in three column format ( column one: vocabulary terms, column two: definition and column three: an illustration of the vocabulary term). Students copy down the vocabulary list. I then assign each student a number and they are to define that vocabulary term. Then, when I say go, students get up and find other students who were assigned the other vocabulary terms. Students VERBALLY TELL their classmates their vocab. term and its definition, they are not to just trade/exchange notebooks and copy each others respective definitions. The listeners must copy down the word and its definition, which usually required the student to repeat their word and definition several times. Students are encouraged to validate the correctness of the definitions by asking other students for their definitions. My students like this strategy and find that time passes quickly and efficiently on days when we do this activity.

What do you do to get students moving and learning in your classroom? Please share it with us ! Thanks for reading my blog !

Do you DUDD ?

Do you DUDD? Oh, you're not familiar with this acronym? DUDD is "Department Unification Dress Days". What does this mean? It means that on certain days, all members of a department are encouraged to be dressed in a similar manner. Our history department has the following DUDD's: Tuesdays is "Tie Day," Thursdays is "Hawaiian Shirt Day," and Fridays are "Khaki Slacks Day."
All members of the history department at my school are male and 80% participate in DUDD's on a regular basis.

Does your department or school DUDD ?

Work site issue

Do you teach around someone who is almost always negative? What do you do about such a situation? I am close to the point where I don't want to interact at all with this teacher. Any ideas ? Talking to this person multiple times about it yielded no changes in their negativity. Changing rooms is not an option. Getting administration involved is not a good idea. Any ideas?

Pre-Reading Text materials

Do you have your students pre-read history, science or other text materials? I often have a "pre-reading" activity for my seventh grade history students. I have to; too many of them arrive at seventh grade without have ever used a textbook! (thanks, open court!). Basically, I ask them a series of questions (usually on a worksheet or copied off the board to the one-third side of their student interactive notebooks). These questions are answered or statements completed (think: fill-in-the-blank) by students scanning and previewing the chapter or lesson's pictures, picture captions, charts, graphs, and other visual materials. They are not to read the paragraphs of the textbook or other text materials. Students may be asked to identify the sub-section titles and perhaps make an inference (prediction) as to the main idea/focus of that section. They list the important vocabulary terms and people (in my textbook, listed on the first page of each lesson) they need to know.

Example questions from Chapter 3, Lesson 1 of a 7th grade world history text:

1. "__________ ______ _________ ______________________ __________________________," is the title of Chapter 3, Lesson 1.

2. According to the map, "Trade Routes, AD 570," three important trade goods from
India are _________________, ______________________, and _____________________.

3. The three main ideas of Chapter 3 Lesson 1 are:

a. ____________________________ = __________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________

b._____________________________ = __________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________

c._____________________________ = ___________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________




You get the idea. Later, we go over each question, with the textbook or other text source open. If I have a class with a high percent ELL's, students can work on this activity in pairs, and I may put the page numbers where the title, picture, map, etc is located. This helps some of my ELL's because they have a hard enough time dealing with the textbook with their second or third grade English language reading levels.

What do you do to help your students learn to read text materials ? Please share with us !

Made a difference....delayed, but....

This week is our schools "Parent Conference Week." One of my students who's parents (yes, both of them!), I conferenced with, were on the way out when the mother turned to me and said, "We probably should tell you something about "Katrina," (not her real name).

"Katrina" was a seventh grade student of mine a number of years ago, and the older sister of one of my current students. Anyhow, the mother proceeded to tell me how thankful they were that I'd called them about my concerns regarding "Katrina" and how at the parent-student-teacher conference, I'd insisted on going through her backpack and daily planner with them. The mother recalled us discovering a number of notes and such things, and commenting to them that some of the names listed on the "Social" page of Katrina's daily planner, were names of students who I said I wouldn't want my children associating with due to their behaviors, attitude, etc.
"You really opened up our eyes about what was going on with Katrina," the mother said. "And that got us to pay more attention to what she was doing and what we needed to do." Katrina is now in the upper stages of high school, doing ok, grade-wise, and active in positive school activities. "Anyhow," mother said,"We thought you might like to know you really made a difference for us and Katrina."

Such things are nice to hear. After all, aren't teachers supposed to "make a difference?" I hope that you other teachers out there get to hear some words like these.

Oh, and btw, if you haven't yet had your annual parent-teacher conferences, Ms. Cornelia (see my blogroll over on the left column), has some good tips for parent-teacher conferences.

Have a good rest of the week !

Dangers abound in one's classroom.....

Today was a tough day for my right hand. Well, my index finger and thumb anyhow. Its good that I don't teach shop, or they might be gone. Anyhow, who'd thought refilling glue bottles could be hazardous?

I have a number of white glue bottles in my classroom, (most purchased during "back to school sales" for .20 or .25 cents each) ( I just realized that this computer key board, unlike one of my old typewriters, does not have a "cents" symbol on it....), many of my students use to glue things in their Student Interactive Notebooks.

Anyhow, I have the remains of a gallon bottle of white glue that I got from someplace here at school, and decided to spend a few minutes of prep period refilling some of the white glue bottles. Several of them were hard to open as some students get sloppy with the glue. In trying to use a too small needle nose pliers to open a few of them, I ended up giving my right index finger not one but two blood blisters from getting pinching by the pliers slipping off the glue bottle tops, then, in trying to open one bottle just using my now smarting hand, ripping a chunk of skin off the inside of my thumb from the rough edges of the glued on top of the glue bottle. This also popped one of the already smarting blood blisters.....

Sometimes, it seems Polski3 has ta feel some pain to realize that refilling a cheap bottle of white glue is not worth such physical torment.

Oh, tonight, while Mrs Polski3 and I bravely did our evening walk at the local mall, I stopped by Sears and bought a nice, new, made in USA pair of channel lock pliers that should work better against stubborn glue bottle tops.

Hope your weekend and next school days are pain-free !

Teacher Reading about Teachers

In no particular order, I'd recommend any and all teachers to read the following three books:

"Up the Down Staircase" ( I don't remember the author )

"To Serve them All my Days" by Delderfield

"Teacher Man" by Frank McCourt


Any comments? Any books you'd add to the list? Please let us know !

After all these years.....

After all the years I've been in the classroom, I still get questions from students that amaze me. Today, we began a new section and spent a few minutes preparing our student interactive notebooks. I asked my students to number their pages from 29 to 39, and reminded them that even numbers are on the left hand page of their SIN, odd numbers are on the right hand page. Lo and behold, one of my seventh graders asked me, "Is 29 an even or odd number?" The student was sincere in their question. I managed to keep a straight face and quietly told her, "odd."

Is it me or shouldn't seventh graders know odd and even numbers?

Have a Happy Day!

WHY is it......

WHY is it that some students who earn an "F" on a test or project, gloat and lord it over those who earned a "lower percentage" F than they did ?

No Peace

Teachers can't walk with their better halves at local malls (mall walking for exercise) on Friday nights without several times, hearing, "HIIIII Mr. POLSKI !" from someplace not too close to where you are ambling along getting some exercise and talking with significant other.

Life for Jr. High Teachers.

Priorities ?

Just what are our priorities?

* Many teachers in California have been laid off, nay, FIRED, because they are the most recent hired and there is no money to continue to employ them.


* My high school son's science class has no lab tables and will be severely restricted on what hands-on lab experiences can be performed in his biology class because there is no money to buy the materials needed for biology lab classes.


* My son's high school orchestra class has no instruments for students to use at home to practice their music. (Note, few student musicians buy their own bass).


* According to recently published School Board minutes, our School District administers attended some summer institute in San Diego this past summer at a cost of $14,000 or so dollars.


* Schools throughout California seem to have the money to train, equip, feed on the road and bus their football, volleyball and cross-country athletes on six hour round trip bus rides to find out if their athletes are better than those from another school.


* Just how many millions of dollars did California spend on a new Language Arts book adoption ? Was it really needed? Was there some huge change in the State Standards to render the previous books unusable? And why does there seem to be a new math program every two years in California ? Is this tied in with some archaic Druid calendar to spend more money for math education?


Just what are our priorities ?

Preparing Them for their future? I wonder.....

My oldest son is now in high school. He has, as a freshman, what I believe should be a fairly challenging academic schedule. His classes include GATE English 9, Geometry, and Biology. However, after four weeks of school, he seems to not have homework for most of his classes. He has regular homework and a project to work on for his GATE English 9 class, but he does not have homework for Biology or Geometry.
I know that when I was in high school, and later in college, I had lots of "out of class" work to do for science and math classes.
I attended his school's "Back to School" night last week. In most of his classes, we were told that homework was worth very little of the grade. His biology classroom does not have lab tables/desks, just student desks, and we were told that due to budgetary issues, the biology students would not experience many actual lab activities. I got the impression that work for most classes was done in class (worksheets!) and they took quizzes and tests.
I wonder if, as a staff, most of the teachers in our local high schools have "given up" on having required homework because too many of their students simply will not do it and turn it in, or if these teachers simply do not want to grade it? I do know that school administrators are "after" teachers because "you teachers are GIVING too many F's."
This bothers me for several reasons. first of all, I wonder how well this policy/attitude toward assigned homework is preparing these students, my son included, for future academic experiences? And it bothers me, a teacher of junior high students, in that we try to get our students used to the fact that homework is part of their academic life and they need to develop good academic skills here at the junior high so that they will be prepared for what I hoped (and assumed) would be more rigor and higher levels of academic expectations at the high school.

As a parent, I am wondering how much to bang my head on that brick wall of the high school in terms of what I believe they should be doing to help my son be prepared for University. As a teacher, is my expectation that my students do homework to practice skills they need to master, to learn the main concepts, vocabulary, etc., of the courses I teach, a moot exercise ?

What do you think ? Do you have a child in high school that does not seem to be rigorous or preparing him/her for University? (Has my experience of what to expect at college/university been changed?) I welcome your thoughts and comments.