Ms. Rodriguez's Classroom

What: We are studying the rise of communist societies in Russia and China in the early and middle of the 20th centuries. Students start out class by making a claim/thesis comparing and contrasting the implementation of communism in each place, then do some mini research to support their claim. Next, we played communism catch phrase! It is exactly what it sounds like. Students are split into three groups (with 4 people per group, I know, my classes are small). Each group gets the same list of 15 words related to the rise of communism in both places. They are: Guomindang Soviet Union Mao Zedong Zhenotdel Karl Marx Warsaw Pact Lenin Provisional government Chiang Kai-Shek Communism Stalin NATO Bolsheviks Kulak Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Each group had one student be the clue giver, and the rest of the class had to guess what the term was based on the clues. They could not rhyme or give initials. Each student had :30 seconds (projected as a timer on the whiteboard)

High school kids don't love to buy into new things. When I told them to take out a pencil at the end of our lesson on progressivism and workers' rights at the turn of the 20th century, they thought it would be a quiz or something academic. When I gave them instructions to make a dot then a winding line, some of them literally drew one centimeter out then back in again. Others drew a huge swooping line, others asked for more clarification in direction.."can we pick our pencils up?" "does it have to be straight?" These students are so structured and rigid with academics that I wanted to give them as little instruction as I could. When I told them to draw over their line, the student with the one centimeter line went "1-2 done done". I was mildly annoyed, but this definitely fits this students' personality. I noticed the females were much quieter and took the activity more seriously than the males. I did the activity with them so I tried to model

It happened again. Woke up at 5 AM like always, rolled over and saw a text from my school: "SPA WILL BE CANCELLED ON WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 20TH DUE TO INCLEMENT WEATHER". I was too excited to go back to sleep. I watched 3 episodes of The Office and eventually nodded off until about 10 am. Grateful as I was for the extra zzz's, it really threw my plans off. I bought a house at the end of the year, and closed on it at the end of January. I've been rehabbing it ever since, and getting ready to move this weekend of the 23rd and 24th. A blizzard is also coming the 23rd and 24th, so I moved my moving day to Friday the 22nd. What else was Friday the 22nd? My first, and likely only, observation by my principal. This could be a make or break! Do I drive in the snow in my Honda Fit and huge moving truck or do I reschedule the observation? I had already taken a half day by his approval, and with our previous schedule (a rotating block schedule), he could still make it, but not t

What: I'm finding a really hard time to naturally implement my small group discussions in my classroom. Part of this is because my lessons are literally written for me--the whole department World History II team does the same things on the same days with the same readings for all of 10th grade. They don't like when I deviate and I find the groupings take a long time to put together, and students don't often remember who they're with or the roles they are taking. So what: I'm afraid I'll have inadequate action research to write about and reflect on, including presenting at spring conference. Now what: Next week is a time where I would naturally have a place to do small groups prior to a large class discussion, but with shortened classes and snow days mixed in, I'm running out of time. I might talk to one of my department members to see if I can amend a lesson to fit the needs of my AR.

Post-Superbowl Sunday I figured I'd have a football theme! Kolb Model: Experience: I was absent on Friday for my U.S. History class so I had a sub. This sub did not follow my plans of teaching how to write a thesis for a research paper so we were essentially behind when I came back on Monday. Now, I had two lessons to make up in one day given the missing lesson. I thought I would be teaching about outline writing, but if the students didn't have a thesis like they were supposed to, there's no point in writing an outline with no argument! The first half of class I modeled what a thesis should and shouldn't look like, then gave students 25 minutes to work on their own. The second half of class I explained what an outline for a research paper looks like then gave students another 25 minutes to work on said outline. Observation:  This worked pretty well for the most part! I let students know that this wasn't my original plan so we were "calling an audible&qu