Advisory Hours

This year, my school choose to start the Navigation 101 program. It's a program spreading over the state... those that have joined in in some manner will probably be shepharded in soon or at least that's the way it appears to certain people who worry about these things.

Mine is not working out as well as I had hoped. The class meets twice a month. I really don't know the students in class - I'm still trying to figure out names. I only see three of them on a daily basis in an education class. Generally, I get the "lesson plan" the day before the class takes place. This doesn't give me much planning time and given the resources I have at hand, not much with to spice it up. These lesson plans are generally 15 minutes long, but the class itself is 35 minutes long. They say things like "dicuss whether or not parents use a bank and which one for 5 minutes". Seriously. This leaves a lot of time to argue "why we need to do this crap" and "why should anyone care". The lesson plans are online, but our school does not go in order. It's impossible to say what will happen the next time we meet, because the uber-lords haven't met to decide what we'll be doing until two days before.

Our last meeting was to discuss the student-led conferences. Fourty percent of my students did not attend. Of those who did, only a couple of students actually followed instructions or had anything to say besides "here's my grades". I basically just gave up, handed out the feedback sheets on which a majority wrote "it was stupid" or "gay" and let them talk the rest of the time.

Do you have an advisory? What do you do with them?

Loobylu is Back!

After year long hiatus, Loobylu is back! And full of crafty ideas! I think I'm already inspired!

Check her out!

Spring Break

Spring Break is here and it's snowing! Predictions are that it will rainy/snowy/generally crappy weather... I'll be using the time to catch up on everything that has been piling up over the last three months. My desk appears to weakening under the pressure of the paper piles.

 

The essays from the Writers' Workshop seem to be very well done. I've only gone through a few, but the students seem to be very proud of their work and are excited to share them with each other.

 

Unfortunately, the research papers seem to be full of plagarized information, wacky citations and little student opinion, reflection or even thought about the chosen topic. I was so disappointed, I almost cried. Instead, after talking to several colleagues, I gave the papers back and told students that they had two weeks to clean them up and turn them back in. So far, I've received 5 back - out of 30 students. Even in choosing their own topic ( an issue in a book they had read/enjoyed previously), working on it for two weeks, conferencing with each student, they still choose the easiest way out of doing anything possible.

Workshop Update

Next Wednesday is the due date for the first essays for the Sophomores Writers' Workshop. Students had to write three pieces. Two were WASL prep type - an expository and persusasive using the usual prompts. The third was an editorial on a topic of their choice. I'm interested to see how they turned out. I've seen bits of several and talked with all the students about them, but the final product I haven't seen on most of them.

Speaking of WASL, the writing prompts were weird. The expository one made one proctor cry and a couple of kids had to talk about what they wrote after because of the emotion it caused. The persusasive one was so close to ones that have already been released, I'm surprised that any student had even think. I'm pretty sure all my students wrote the same thing they've written in previous exercises.

Also, I'd like to send out a plea to the test creators... stop asking the students to "write a letter"! They aren't writing a letter. They're writing a 5 paragraph essay. In fact, they must write an essay with at least 5 paragraphs, an introduction paragraph and a conclusion paragraph. If they wrote an actual letter, they would fail this portion of the WASL. I think the only rease you can get away with it is due to the fact that students are no longer taught to write letters until their senior year of high school.

Baby update

Lala is becoming more of a little person every day! She's learned to sit up fairly well, even in the bathtub. This weekend, she seems to have crossed the line between passive observer to actively touch everything - I dunno how to explain it, she just suddenly seems to be more interested in things around her. She's got a new favorite toy that she picked out herself (it was the only one she did more than just stare at)... she remembers it from previous play times, so maybe some object permanance is going on. She's still more interested in eating books that reading them.

She graduated to Stage 2 foods (which basically means, she eats more in a sitting) - we were getting mixtures of foods and fruits. I'm still trying to figure out all this "when to introduce..." advice. Everyone says something different... however Lala isn't at the stage where she recognizes that "if I put something in my mouth, I can eat it, rather than just play with it" and she's not at the stage of really chewing either, so we're sticking to mush.