Winter is coming...

As it is the last day of November, I have come to the realization that I am basically half way done with my first year of teaching. In three weeks it will be the end of the first semester. Three weeks sounds like a lot, but it is essentially only 15 days for a teacher. 

After that fifteen days I will have completed half of my first year of teaching. After that fifteen days, I will only have 21 weeks left of this first year. This is some mind blowing information as I begin the month of December. 

I just want to take a minute and realize how so many things have changed and how time has effected me. I have been teaching now for 4 full months. In thme of my students. 

ose four months I have gone from never having taught before to being a teacher, feeling comfortable about the content, starting to incorporate some new strategies, and really got to know some of my students really well. 

I cannot express how grateful I am for this experience. I am also so shocked that it has been already been almost half of my first year. Where has the time gone? 

Quotes From My Sixth Graders

My life is never boring as a teacher. Here are two great quotes from today. 

"What would you do if you dropped a piece of chicken you paid a lot of money for?" 

"Mr. Wobbrock, are you trying to be cool? Your pants are tighter than usual!" 

Lesson Planning

Sundays used to be a day for doing nothing on the couch and relaxing after a silly college weekend. Now Sundays are filled with lesson planning, quiz creating, activities organizing and exhaustion. While prepping for this upcoming week, I am so excited for it to be my second week with my newest classroom lesson structure. 

I am blessed to have a great resource at my school. Our exceptional education coach at my school has given me what she used as her weekly structure when she was in a co-teaching classroom. I have adapted it and began to use it on a regular basis. Below is my weekly structure of instructional time.

In one week we focus on one standard.  

Monday - New Material Lecture. Every Monday we have a lecture style class, where students take notes and are able to ask questions. This is to get students used to taking notes for a longer amount of time and to focus on the new material in one sitting.

Tuesday - Independent Practice. This is a chance for students to practice and practice and practice. In math repetition is so important. Students get an entire block to ask questions and work on our standard for the week on their own. This is a great time for me to give each student the individualized attention that they need.  

Wednesday - Group Work. This is a chance for differentiation. Taking the data and student work from Monday and Tuesday, I place all of the students in groups of 4 or 5 and have them work on the standards in a group setting. This gives the students a chance to explain the material in their own words and to attempt to teach each other. It is essential for students to work together in order to gain a full understanding of the mathematical processes.  

Thursday - Math Labs. Math Labs are used to integrate technology into the classroom and a way to have students learn from online games and lessons. This is a day for me to pull students that need to have a little extra help. I use the day for small group intervention in order to prepare all students for our weekly assessment. 

Friday - Assessment. This is pretty self explanatory. Assessment day is to test students in a formative manner to see if they fully grasped the concepts from the week. 

That is the week in a nutshell. Every assessment build on each other. The students are tested on every standard every week. Naturally there is a focus on that week's new standard. But this helps the students not forget what they had learned previously in the year. 

Atmospohere

As this is a blog about my life as a teacher and the happenings of my first year. I feel pretty obligated to show you the classroom that I teach in and give you a little information about my school. 

This is my classroom. I am a teacher at Jere Baxter Middle Prep of Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools. I am the sixth grade math teacher at my school. I have about 80 total students give or take a few. 

This is where the so called magic happens, if you want to say that. I would not call it magic just yet, but hopefully one day it will be a place of magic.

"The classroom environment can support learning when arranged suitable." From Surviving to Thriving by Linda Carpenter, Jennifer Fontanini, and Linda Neiman.

It does not usually look like this. It is typically much more messy and cluttered. This is an old picture of what it looked like before school started in August. But the classroom still looks about the same. 

Why Blog?

I am a first year teacher. I am a recent college grad. I am a Teach For America 2014 Greater Nashville Corps Member. I am a sixth grade teacher. I am a math teacher. I am a graduate student at Lipscomb University. I am a northerner by birth and a southerner by choice. I am a sinner. I am a Christian. I am a redhead. I am a member of the LGBTQ community. I am many things. Being many different things, I have a lot on my mind. I have a lot of perspectives. With so many perspectives and being a first year teacher. I have decided to blog. I have decided to record my life. It will sometimes be for me to just let it go. It will sometimes be for me to brag about my students. It will sometimes be for me to talk about the happenings in my classroom. It will sometimes be for me to share with you. It will sometimes be private. 

As a first year teacher I have realized that reading and writing are not what they used to be. I am not that much older than my students don't get me wrong. However, I did not used to complain when I was asked to write a paragraph in the sixth grade. It was just the expectation. With the realization that writing and reading do not come easy to my students, it has made me appreciate the fact that I am able to write and read as often as I want, yet for some reason I do not do either. So I am going to blog about my life as it is. 

There is no real purpose for this blog. Mostly it will focus on my life as a teacher. However, as we all know, being a teacher is my entire life, so who knows what will show up on this blog. It is just high time that I start recording my thoughts. 

If anyone does decide to read this. Please keep in mind that I am writing from but one perspective and there are so many out there that I am not seeing life through. Please bear with me.