What's working
- PBS with tickets and a raffle on Fridays. (Thanks Annette and Jen!)
- Handing each student a card with the coordiantes for a point and having them plot their point on the board one at a time. (Even my kids who ususally do nothing did this)
- Positivity
- Concrete, explicit directions
- Taking an interest in each student (The whole "I noticed ________" thing from the Teaching with Love and Logic book)
- Collaborating
What's not working
- 5th hour. It is still a challenge for me. I have many students failing the class and they seem to be starting to give up hope for the term. There's this "I don't care" attitude for many of the students in this class.
- Keeping the students' on task for the whole hour. This is primarily 5th period again, but also in other classes. I have tried to have a variety of activities for each day so it won't seem so monotonous, but once they lose focus it is very difficult to rope them back in for the next activity.
2 comments:
Thanks for sharing! I have also started to see that I am losing some students. I have noticed that if they start to get discouraged, it snowballs quickly. I am still working on how to balance having high academic expectations and challenging students with delivering material in a way that makes it seem manageable and worthwhile for the students. I have had success with routines so they have some comfort level with what to expect each day (but trying not to bore them) as well as my weekly quizzes that I let them retake as many times as they want. It isn't a perfect system, but they seem a little less likely to give up if they know they will be able to try again if they don't get a good grade. I also find success with colored paper and graphic organizers. Students always seem to be on task when they have a box to fill in. I'm also interested in what is working with everyone else.
Have you tried using the Navigator with this group? There have been claims of some dramatic success stories with groups such as yours (Repeat Algebra 9 students?). It sounds like a class that has not had success with traditional methods so you will likely need to go "outside the box" to reach them.
TD
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