Geometry Unit

I finally finished my TPAC geometry unit. This was the first major unit I planned. We started planning for our unit during fall quarter. It was at this time that I realized that there was no way I could teach Geometry in only five days. My unit, the one that started as 5 days, was a full 2.5 week. Thanks to snow days and holidays, my unit took over three weeks. 

I could not be happier with the results of my unit. The really exciting thing about this until was that the majority of students had already met the 1st grade Geometry standards so my unit was almost all enrichment. I chose to focus on 2 main ideas:

(1) Identifying shapes by the number of sides and angles they have and

(2) Composing and decomposing shapes from other shapes.

 

From a teaching perspective, I really tried to incorporate many different learning styles. We had hands-on activities, connections to literature, book study, and traditional worksheets. Not all of the lessons I taught were perfect, but I feel confident that they were effective and taught my students to look at shapes in a different way. 

Throughout this lesson I capitalized on my students love of reading by using children's literature to introduce and review many of the concepts in my unit. Dr. Seuss' The Shape of Me, The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns, and The Great Shape Race by McGraw Hill were staples to introducing non-traditional shapes, using sides and angles to label shapes, and exploring 3-D shapes respectively.

One of my most popular activities was our shape hunt. The children split up into teams to find objects in the room that had either no sides, 3 sides (a triangle), 4 sides (quadrilaterals), or 5+ sides. This was a fun take on "write the room" and I loved the carry over between math and science. After the lesson I left extra scavenger hunt pages with a basket of picture books so the children could do a literature shape hunt when they finished their work early.

Additionally, as you can see in the slide show, I incorporated books about quilting into our CAFE (reading workshop) time. I also plan to continue the quilting theme by reading Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt during black history month. After reading the book, each child will add a small house to their quilt square. This house will symbolize a stop on the Underground Railroad similar to Clara's Quilt. 

I LOVED teaching this unit! I have 101 more ideas I could have incorporated, but good things come to an end and there is always next year! After we finished our assessment (twice, but that is another post itself), it was time to move on to our Money unit. 

P.S: My mom deserves a shout out for helping me cut 1,000 triangles for our class quilt over winter break. This is clearly why I went home :)

Famous

Just so you know... I looked famous today.

H: "M...You look famous today! Why do you look so famous?"
M: "I don't know...I just do"
H: "ooooooo, Miss Prinzo, you look famous today too!"

Famous is apparently when your hair is pulled up into a pony tail...It is good to know that on days like today when I am too tired to straighten my hair, I can still look famous :)

Top 10 Ways to Make your Principal your "Pal" and Other Advice (part 1)

Tonight at Senior Seminar we had amazing speakers, Mr. Hockenberrry, the principal at Oyler School and his co-worker Mrs. Dorfmann, a special education teacher. He began his talk by listing 10 pieces of advice for first year teachers.

While some of them are extremely obvious, I thought the list was a helpful reminder to everyone on how to conduct yourself in a professional, teaching environment. We all will be nervous going into our first year. We all will make mistakes. This list gives ways to show your effort and ways to show that you are willing to do what it takes to provide a solid education for your students.

For me, it was also a realization for me how helpful my experiences with extra-curricular activities (even going back to MS and HS) have been so critical to my education. His advice was obvious to me. It was not obvious to me b/c of my coursework, practicum, and ST experience (though Melanie reinforces all of this), it was obvious b/c what I have done outside of the classroom. Here is the list:

  Top 10 Ways to Make the Principal your "Pal"

(10) On-time performance: Make timeliness a priority...especially during arrival, dismissal, lunch, and specials. Do not make people wait for you.

(9) AVOID "I have the worst class" syndrome: This is very unlikely. It is more likely that you need to improve. Instead of complaining and making excuses for your class and yourself find a way to get better!

(8) Get involved: somehow I think I have this one mastered! He made a really good point though...EVERYBODY IS BUSY, but if we really want to foster a positive school atmosphere and we really want to

(7) Do not make your principal work backwards: make sure to read emails, announcements, newsletters, etc. Stay organized and on top of things so that your principal does not have to ask you twice and/or back track to find information that you might have forgotten about.

(6) Don't "bad mouth" your principal: I think this one is self explanatory, but probably the most broken rule by teachers. I swear, teacher's gossip and complain more than middle school girls! Even if your principal is not in the room, it will get back to them eventually.

(5) Classroom Management is your responsibility (NOT your principals): 1. they are too busy, 2. you loose credibility and control with your students if the principal needs to come in to help you manage your classroom.

(4) Don't pass off the "Monkey on your Back": There is a difference between venting and problem solving. Make sure that when you approach your principal with a problem you are not complaining, but rather actively working out a way to make your situation better. Come with ideas and options to discuss.


(3) No Surprises: Keep records and let your principal know of problems that happened in the classroom. It is better that he know that the problem happened and how the problem was dealt with BEFORE he is confronted about it than after.

(2) Attendance should be your priority: Your attendance has a HUGE impact on your students. He used a great example. Having a substitute teacher in your place is like walking on to an airplane and have the stewardess let you know that the regular pilot was unavailable, so today's flight will be navigated by a biologist. Just because someone has a 4 year degree, does not mean they are qualified to teach your classroom. Even substitutes with an education degree cannot adequately replace you. Your students respond best to you---your routine, your standards, and your management.

(1) Realize that you are trusted with someone else's most precious possession: Every child is someone's child, niece, neighbor, grandchild, etc. Everyone of your students is a part of a family and his or her family trusts YOU to teach them and care for and about them for six hours every single school day. This is a tremendous responsibility and will make your job as an educator incredibly rewarding.

Mr. Hockenberry and Mrs. Dorfmann talked about many more important things, but it is way past my bed time so I will leave you waiting foe part 2!

Mom!

W: "Mom, Can I.."
Miss Prinzo (teasing): "What did you just call me? I am telling your mo-om!
W: ((turns bright red, walks away laughing, waits a second and comes back))
      " I meant Miss Prinzo, but I love you too"

"I'm not going to call on you"

Our students give short speeches each month for a monthly project. This month they talked about their dream job (aka What do you want to be when you grow up?). At the end of each speech the other students can ask 3 questions. One of my students was taking questions when...

L: ((blurts out question))
C: Um L, I am not going to call on you b/c you didn't raise your hand. ((calls on someone else who is raising their hand))
L: ((raises hand))
C: L, thanks for raising your hand.

The student is officially the teacher. What a good reminder that students feed off of your words and actions!

A 'Come to Jesus' speech kind of day

AHHHHHHHHH!

Today was a day of days! Monday was hard after coming back from a 4 day weekend/snow days. Yesterday was pretty frazzling as well, so yesterday night I stayed an extra 3 hours after school to really prepare for today. I came into today an extra 20 minutes early and was very very prepared, but for lack of a better word, my students would not shut up or listen all day! Everything took forever! Instead of the 1 minute it takes to clean up and line up it took 5. Instead of transitioning in the carpet quickly and quietly, it took FOREVER. At one point in the day I actually made tally marks on the board counting how long it took past a reasonable amount of time for the students to come to the carpet. I got up to 100 tallies before the majority of students showed me they had listened to directions.

I swear, I pulled out ever classroom management strategy that we have ever used this year (and some of my own on the spot) and it seemed like nothing was working!

Finally, my mentor teacher had "had it". She rarely ever cuts in while I am talking or formally in charge, but after I had repeated myself for the millionth time today, she gave them "Come to Jesus" Speech #1 (don't know what I am talking about see Come to Jesus Meeting). She asked the students what my directions were (that I had repeated 3 times in the last minute) and no one could answer. There were guesses, but no where close. The class was silent as she explained how frustrating it was for teachers, especially me learning how to be a teacher, to have to repeat ourselves over and over and see students doing the wrong thing or not learning because of their behavior. She had the perfect timing b/c I was about ready to either fly off the handle or burst into tears. It worked. We were back on track and independent work time during CAFE was quiet and productive.

Now lets move on to the first CAFE independent work time to our Group activity...it start again. This time it is interrupting during directions. My turn. "Come to Jesus" part 2. A short, but effective. I give a similar talk, but focused on how many fun and exciting things we could be doing if we could just listen and follow directions  and, one of my favorites, if you listen to ALL of my directions, I will likely answer your questions.Talk over. Begin cleaning up and move to the carpet.

Two minutes later, Come to Jesus part 3. I go at it again. This time in a quieter tone. My talk is on "Do you think Mrs. Baumann and I like yelling at you? Do you think we want to spend our whole day yelling at you? Again, we are quiet and have a great time looking for our word wall words in a page from children's literature (Did you know over 75% of the words in children's books are sight words? We proved it.).

We go back to our seats...everything is good until our IA walks in (an hour and a half late...) and disrupts the previously silent independent work time. It is over. They never get quiet again, but my mentor teacher and I agree to let them go b/c it was an adult's influence this time).

Come the Jesus part 4: Tag-Team. Instead of centers you get to deal with the pile of work in the unfinished basket and then you can look through the 30 papers without names on them (yes, I actually counted...I started a tally. Our goal is to remember our name on every single paper. If we have a week without a single 'no name' tally, I promised them I will bring in a special treat. The treat is TBD and I am counting on it not happening, but if it does they deserve something special). Those of you who did all of your work correctly can play games independently. This works well, but the "concentration" noise level (nothing above a whisper so your neighbor's can concentrate) did not last long. Neither teacher has the will to shut them up so we let it go and only re-direct students who are excessively noisy.

Class meeting/ pack up. We gave the directions. The same ones as always and chaos came. It was like they had never packed up a day in their life. Wait we need our bookbags? Oh the papers need to go in my folder? I need to make sure my table space is clear? A lunch box...what is that? Oh, I brought a coat today? This went on FOREVER! Well like 10 minutes (which is forever in teacher-time, especially on a 4-5minute routine normally). Come to Jesus Speech Grand Finale. This one was my mentor teacher's turn. Repeat speeches part 1-4 and finish off with "the next 5 minutes will be silent. If you talk you will pull a card. If you are not silent, you will pull a card. If you have no cards left, tomorrow morning you get to call home and explain to mom and dad that for the first time ever you had to call home because of your behavior." ((pure silence)).

I finished up packing to make my way to seminar and said goodbye to the class. At first no one responded b/c they were afraid to talk. "It's okay to say good bye"

And thus, a "Come to Jesus" kind of day. To end on a positive note, my mentor teacher and I talked about how behavior had been this week. She explained to me something I had not really thought of, but that makes perfect sense...our class has really bonded. They are clearly comfortable here. Many students behave differently (and more relaxed/loosely) at home because they are comfortable here. Creating a community is extremely important to my mentor teacher and myself, and I believe our students have strong bonds and our classroom really is a community. There is give and take. This was a give day!

Turkey and Chicken

Two of my students were looking at a globe during center time...

(T) Turkey? There is a country named Turkey?
(S) No there's not...wait there is really a country named Turkey?
(T) Yeah! See! (points to it on globe)
(S) Well, there has to be a "Chicken" then.

...and then they spend the next 5 minutes looking for a country called "Chicken" on the map...