Sunday Work

I feel more prepared for this week than last week. One of our big ideas at TFA is "big goals." Basically we set big goals and track the students' progress toward those goals individually and as a class. So today I created a huge poster detailing the class averages on the diagnostic and on the various assessments I've given. I have "% Mastery" on the Y-axis and "Assignments and Objectives" on the X-axis. Each assignment is color-coded by objective so that the class can see how well they did and if their average is getting them closer to the class goal. Each time we have a new set of assignments, I'll update the chart (although this will most likely be a student's job in the class). Here is a photo to give you a better picture:














The image might look a bit distorted because I had to deal with the screen's angle in order to get a good picture. After dinner I'll be practicing my intros to new material (what most would call "lecture" but the parts of the lesson where you talk and demonstrate the new material you want your students to know). We are doing a week on force, motion, and simple machines, so class will be quite interactive this week.

The whole idea behind the tracking chart is to give the students a visual representation of how they are doing in the class. The idea is to make them work as a team to get the goals up (with the teacher being the leader, hence, TFA's idea of "teaching as leadership"). Students will also have individual tracking systems that tell them how they are doing privately. Tracking is both a learning strategy and a classroom management strategy--you can show the results from various days when the students were disruptive/off track and show how that behavior led to less learning and vice versa. I still have to add the goal for the class and it will probably be around 80-85% mastery on all objectives for all students--seems to be the recommended number.

Tomorrow I am also giving out class leadership roles which will allow students to become more invested in class and it will give the more active students something to do during class. Jobs include passing out papers, passing out the warm-up, collecting homework, supplies manager for labs, etc. This method allows students to feel part of the class rather than people that the teacher "talks at" during class.

I feel pretty prepared for tomorrow, although I still have to practice my introduction to new material a few times before bed (trying for 10pm tonight). I'll update as to how all of this worked out during class tomorrow.