Ms. Rodriguez's Classroom

Evidence is definitely required for this comparison of different sections of the same class doing the same Harkness discussion. Who: my students with whom I was not doing my action research. What: monitoring discussion equity with the same app I used for my other class. When: the same day I monitored discussion for my experimental class These students were naturally much more equitable than my experimental class. They had an equity rating of roughly 80%, while my experimental class had one of 67%! I think this happened because they are naturally a more equitible class, and since I wanted to promote equity in my other, experimental class, these were the results I expected from this section (periods 5 and 7, my experimental class was period 8) since we are done with Harkness discussions for the quarter, I shared this information with all classes by first asking how they think they did. They were all pleasantly surprised with their equity levels, and period 8 was not at all. We will...

This past weekend I gave my "Hot Topics" presentation on accountable talks. One of the things we focus on in high school is using sentence stems to ask good questions. However, I missed a perfect opportunity to use the sentence stem soccer ball I made for class. I Had a simulation where Cuba, the United States, and the USSR were all trying to figure out how the Cuban Missile Crisis started and who was responsible. It started out with small group research and then went into a full fledged debate. I tried to monitor and moderate as always but it got intense and some of the boys, who are more comfortable with one another, began to talk over all the female students. One even ran out crying and had a panic attack with the school counselor. I felt so horrible about how this spiraled out of control, and thought, in retrospect, if I used the soccer ball with appropriate sentence stems as our "talking stick" it could have gone much smoother and more equitable. All of my res...

This weekend we learned about the importance of brain breaks. These usually aren't employed very often in high school because we assume our students' brains don't need them! We are so focused on pounding them with content we forget that they are 16 year olds in adult looking bodies. Today I did a simple one: After doing a short reading at their own pace, I told my students to put their heads down and close their eyes until the whole class was complete with the task. They all did it no questions asked! To bring them back into the lesson I gently started talking until all heads were up. We then had a low-key discussion regarding the reading. I think it's really important to give students at this level a break because they are secretly not as developed as we think they are.

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.