Chunking

In yesterday's excitement, I left out some of the particular highs and lows. First, I discovered that if you seek out information about TFA from a non-TFA-endorsed website, the picture is much different than I thought. However, upon arrival at St. John's, we were greeted with cotton candy and Sno-cones. They had scheduled events like an Inception screening, yoga class, and an "Ash's Full Body Workout" (which I can only imagine involves Pokemon fighting).

I spent the afternoon starting a new workout plan. I still can't seem to want to get running (a scraped toe doesn't help). Then, I decided to take a trip to Trader Joe's with a friend. No more dining hall packed sandwiches for me. Today I have pita and hummus, string cheese, and freeze dried banana chips (all the joy of bananas, but crunchy!).

There was a fight in the hallway this morning. I was working in the quiet room and heard a scuffle in the hallway. I walked to the doorway to see two (non-TFA) teachers pulling apart two students. One of them required tackling. The hallway was cleared quickly, which impressed me. No one was hurt. I wonder if my job description requires tackling students also.

Today I taught photosynthesis and respiration (organelles, reactants, products, and function only). I had a brilliant 2-part diagram on poster paper. One sheet showed photosynthesis, one sheet showed respiration, but if you overlay them...it's a cycle! I was so proud of it, and so sad to throw it in the trash after class. Way better than any Powerpoint or Smartboard presentation or any of those newfangled technologies that ALL OTHER CLASSROOMS HAVE.

We found an overhead projector this week. It was broken. I guess we'll stick with the poster board.

My exit slips averaged 67%; not bad, but definitely not class mastery. The student with the lowest score is frustrating to me. He knows the material, which he shows in class discussion and answering questions. He is not always paying attention completely (I know what that's about), but he has insightful comments and answers, and sometimes makes anticipatory connections that make me happy. However, he is not doing well on his exit tickets. There is some disconnect between his verbal knowledge and his ability to answer Regents multiple choice questions. I've seen this in other students, like one who scored well on the short answer part of the pre-Assessment, but got nearly all of the multiple choice questions wrong.

This one student, I suspect, is performing poorly for one of two reasons: he isn't paying attention to the questions and answer choices, or he is having trouble breaking apart the dense wording of the questions/answers. Today I addressed the idea that is possible to use context clues to interpret confusing test questions, but I think I will include more mini-lessons this summer. I think test-taking skills should be emphasized more; I saw assessments with multiple choice questions left blank!

After a one-hour review tomorrow and a brief discussion of “chunking” (breaking verboseness into smaller, more understandable chunks), they have their midterm assessment. I hope it goes well.

And now, I have some pita and hummus eagerly awaiting.