I am being challenged to make sure that I'm always engaging and not just teaching to the few children in my class who will always keep in step with me. Let me give you an example:
25 kids. 19 are hanging on every word I saw. They are following along with the examples and being on task. 6 are in whereever land. Not listening, maybe drawing or just being off task. I'm not engaging the entire class. Most teachers don't do it on purpose, but they don't engage everyone when they teach.
So what I'm going to do is a lot more projects and whole lot less talking. We're going to be cranking out small group projects in class like Tupac be cranking out "lost music". Since math can honestly touch every area of the ciriculum, we're going to get our writing on as well as engage more science.
The program APS uses, Project Grad has some good points, while a few of them have stumped me. I'm going to have to work within their framework, but still get a lot more micro on my engage part. It's already tough keeping everyone's attention, but when you realize that your lesson might be the reason, you got to crank up the juice.
I have my lesson plans done for next week. So I'm going to use my other planning times to develop 15 really kicking projects with some super rubrics. Going to drop them on the kiddies Monday and watch the magic happen. Since math can honestly be incorporated into every part of the curriculum I'm going to see if I can add some writing as well as more science. There's a science fair in a few weeks I am sure I can add some help to.
Let's get at it!
