Generalness and Math

Hey Everyone,

Happy New Year, hope everyone had a relaxing holiday (I know, that break seems like forever ago)! I am coming to the end of a extra-long weekend due to a storm day on Friday (woo hoo)! One of the perks of teaching outside of the city is being able to roll over and go back to sleep after that great phone call while all your friends who teach in the city still have to go to school (sorry, friends)! :)

If you are wondering, no, I still haven't found a job, but I am doing a short stint in a classroom in a school I used to work in for the next week and a half. So I get snow days too. Unfortunately, there were a bunch of things at school that I wanted to take home for the weekend from her classroom to get ready for this week, but I wasn't able to since I wasn't at school. Oh well, I'll take sleeping in, going for breakfast with the hubs and getting my grocery shopping done by 10am.

So I've had a couple of questions about my guided math program that I'm going to try to answer, and later this week (hopefully) I'm going to post about my exciting math-related project I'm doing for my post-bacc course.

Guided Math

So Aviva was asking about problem solving and communication in my guided math groups. One thing to stress with the students when building your guided math routine is how to work when you are not with the teacher. Some of these strategies include the mechanics of station work: how to get and pack up materials, how to move from one area to another, etc. But the other important routines to build with your students are how to work together, how to "help" one another, and how to talk about math. (As a disclaimer, I would like to say that all of my schooling and experience has been in grades 3-7. So some of my ideas may need to be tweaked for first and second graders).

The idea of teaching kids the second set of routines is super important. I don't know how many times I go into classrooms and am trying to help students with a problem, when the next kid in line whispers the answer. They think that they are helping, but really, they are just speeding the process along. This becomes important to kibosh when you are doing g.m. because the students are working alone in their groups without you for 3/4 of the time. One of the preteaching things that I always do is talk about how we can help. I try to teach students to talk about processes, not results. Talk your friend through how you started to solve the problem, or important words, or where to look to find the info you need to begin. I find, especially at the middle grades, that this is difficult for kids. They don't want to show their work, or talk about strategies; teaching them how to do this effectively is super important (and for little kidlets too, that way they'd be used to it by grade 5)! :)

For problem solving, I would start off as a whole group, and go through strategies to use. We would probably start with different problems that would use the same strategy. I used a program called "Problem Solver 6". What I might do in the future is to give each group a problem once a week when they meet with me. Then in one of their breakoff groups (paper/pencil, or instead of fact practice) I would get them to take turns talking about the steps that they would use to solve the problem, or maybe give each group a different type of problem, and have them be 'experts' on that type of problem to teach the rest of the class.

As I said, so much of it is about pre-teaching these routines. Like in the Daily 5 program, you have to start small, and definitely teach kids the language, expectations and routines. You might not get into fully operating guided math groups until November. But that's okay. All that preparation means that it will run so much smoother later on.

Hope that helps! Any questions, ask 'em in the comments!

As a final note on this incredibly long post, I need to share this picture, which may finally help me to remember what the difference between mean, median and mode is. I shared it with a group of grade sixers on Thursday and they were repeating it all morning!








Take care!

My Two Cents (News and a Pet Peeve)

Hello All,

Two posts in one month! Go big or go home! LOL

Just an update: I had an interview today! (Yay!) First one since August. I think it went pretty well, and hopefully I will hear back from them with good news soon. The only thing that scares me is that it is a grade 1/2 position! I usually say that those grades are a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there! I think that it could be a fun experience though. And they do a lot of team teaching/collaborating, so I would have a bunch of support. That would be nice.

On to my pet peeve. As I think I've mentioned before, I have had a lot of experience in my (5 and a bit) years of teaching. Unfortunately, I've never had a full school year in one place, and I've had a few terms that were only 2-3 months long, and two of those I was only teaching half-time.

I overheard a girl talking in my night class a few weeks ago about how she is subbing because she's already had lots of terms, and she doesn't need any more "experience" just a job. Which got me thinking about how my experience is viewed by others. Then, at the interview today, the principal basically asked (in a nicer way than this) if the fact that I had so many jobs in different places was because there was something wrong with me. At first, I thought that this was a pretty unfair statement, as I feel like landing a permanent job is a lot more about being in the right place at the right time, rather than based on skill. On the other hand, I appreciated the fact that this principal was upfront about that thought, and gave me a chance to speak to this concern. Hopefully if (when) he calls my references, they will be able to say that they would hire me again, they just didn't have the ability to do so now.

I think it's really unfair that in this kind of "buyer's market" where lots of teachers are competing for few jobs, that I am going to be judged on teaching in several different schools in several different divisions. Some of the schools I worked at were shrinking due to lowered enrolment, some had people who had been on terms longer than I had, and some just didn't have any openings. That shouldn't paint me as an incompetent teacher.

Ah well. Glad to have gotten an interview, anyways. I always think that that is the hardest part of the battle. After getting the interview, getting the job should be easy! :)

Thanks for listening!

Life, the Universe, and Everything

Hey Everyone,

Here I am again, quite a while since my last post once more. I haven't been around since I haven't really had any positive teaching-related things to share, and I didn't want to be "that person" who fills up their space with negative things. I have a tendency to see more negativity in my life than positive, and I'm trying very hard to create more positivity around myself. That being said, I also wanted to give you a heads up as to what has been going on in my life the last little while.

So once again, I am without a job this year. This is so frustrating for me. A little bit of background, this is my sixth year of teaching. In those six years, I technically have 3+ years of experience, teaching in 6 different schools (in order, grade 6, 4, 6/7, 3, 5/6, 3/4), in 4 different school divisions, not to mention the subbing I've done in between some of those jobs (which range in time from 2 months to almost a full year).

I hate applying for what seems like hundreds of jobs (I counted, 46 for this school year) and hearing very little in return. I know that it is a tough market, and even getting interviews (2 of 46) is an accomplishment (when I got my 6/7 job a few years ago, they had 200 applicants and interviewed 3 people, and it's only gotten harder since then), but it doesn't feel that way. I just feel like a failure, somedays. I have two university degrees and I'm still stuck working evenings and weekends at my crappy part-time retail job.

I know at this point lots of people would be saying, "If it's so difficult and you feel so badly about yourself, why are you still trying?" I've asked myself this several times over the last few years as well, but the only answer I can come up with is, "what else can I do? This is all that I want." So I keep on truckin' and hoping that one day it will be me in the right place at the right time, who finally knows the 'right' people.

If you made it this far, thanks so much for sticking around and listening to my rant. One of the things that I am working on for my Special Ed. class is a resource for teachers of middle years math, so I hope to have some things to share, strategies for teaching some of the harder ideas in mathematics.

Talk soon!

Made it Monday! Finally!

Yay! I finally made it for a Made it Monday with Tara over at Fourth Grade Frolics! 

This Made it is actually a while in the making, but it is finished...and it is Monday, so I get to link up! I'm so excited! 

If you spend as much time on Pinterest as I do, you'll probably know this sign: 

http://www.etsy.com/listing/81301231/classroom-rules-subway-style-wood-sign?ref=cat3_gallery_22

Which I really loved. Then, scrolling through another set of Monday Made Its, I found this post by Jen @ Teaching and Tech in the Middle School (go check it out if you want how to pictures, and because she's awesome). 

So short story long, I went to Michael's, bought a canvas and a couple tubes of paint, bought some different font cartridges for my Cricut, cut the phrases on cardstock to use as a stencil and ended up with this: 

(Please excuse the blurry phone picture)

It still needs a couple touch ups, but I'm pretty excited about how it turned out. Thinking about doing a matching/opposite colours one for this: 

  

And on another note: Had an interview today! Keeping my fingers & toes crossed until Wednesday. Sent positive thoughts my way! 

Now go amaze me with your craftiness!

Happy Monday Everyone!

August Currently

Hey All,

I don't know what it is about writing/blogging, but it really makes me want to say "y'all" all the time! I am from nowhere near the south, but it brings it out in me!

Anyway, super busy this weekend with weddings (today and tomorrow) but wanted to check in and post my Currently for August :)

Have a good (long) weekend everybody!

School (the other kind)!

Welcome back!

So last time I mentioned something about having some more news.

So over the past few months, I've hemmed and hawed over the idea of heading back to university and doing a few courses. On one hand, I didn't want to do it because as someone who has two degrees adding up to six years of university, going back and doing a full year's worth of courses would 'bump me up' the pay scales in my province. Teachers here only need to have 5 years of schooling, so I'm already more expensive than other people with the same years of experience as I have. I didn't know if this would be an issue at hiring.

On the other hand, one of my eventual goals is to qualify to become a resource teacher, especially as there have been a number of postings over the last while looking for those lovely people. What I really wanted to do was qualify as a Teacher of the Deaf/hoh, but apparently I missed that boat by a few months at my home university when they offered it as a "one time only" course! :(

So, long story short, I've applied to go back to school to work on my PBDE (Post-Baccalaureate Diploma in Education). I figure that professional development and life-long learning can't be looked at as detrimental to an applicant, even if it makes me a little pricier. :)

So I'm pretty excited to go back to school! One of my friends is also taking the course I want, and I know the professors for both halves! The first one is a prof I had during my undergrad and the second is the former vp from my first school! Yay!

Thanks for sticking with me all the way to the end!

Anyone else heading back to university this year?


'Til next time!

Update

Hello Peeps!

I hope that you are somewhere where the weather is cooperating and you don't have to hide inside hugging your air conditioner while the weather is being stubborn! It has been a hot couple of weeks here in Winnipeg, and even the thunderstorm we got last night has not helped break the humidity. My poor hair!

Anyways, I feel like I owe you an explanation for my absence (once again), so I decided to do it in pictures!

First there was this:

And then there was this:

And, finally:

If you're still confuzzled, last Saturday, on our twelfth 'anniversary' of dating, hubs and I *finally* tied the knot. You know it's bad when people start asking when you're having babies even before the wedding is over.

So now that that's behind me, hopefully I will have more time to devote to this li'l old blog of mine!

In related news, if you're wondering, still no new prospects on the job front. Everything's pretty much shut down for a few more weeks, hopefully good news then.

I have some more news, but in the interest of keeping this short, I'll save it for next time (and you'll be guaranteed one more post soon)!

Laters!