I know, my posting is more bi-weekly than weekly at this point. My schedule is a little crazy now at home and with local elections, so forgive the tardiness. Here it goes…I’m still getting to know this class but they are a lot more compliant than ones of the past. At this point they are exceptionally well behaved in class for sixth graders. Due there less obtrusive natures, and my absences for the reasons listed above, I haven’t gotten to know them as well as I’d like at this point, but it’s still only a little over a month into the school year.

I’m having some frustration with mathematics. I’ll have a more involved post where I list the many problems that my district has created with implementing new CCSS aligned curriculum, but I’m going to focus on shortcomings of the materials. and teaching going on at this point. The first unit in both our old and new curriculum is introducing algebra. This has usually gone very well for me, with grades dropping when we move on to number sense (computation of decimals, integers, and fractions). That’s not the case this year. The Pearson Envision math just does NOT cover the subject with enough depth, and the kids are having a hard time. In some cases, it’s just the students are not attending to precision (OW, bad CCSS joke). What I do like is they are willing to write about mathematics, and although they aren’t at the level required in this writing yet, they aren’t arguing about it, and can at least craft a coherent sentence about a problem. In past years I’ve had students resist doing writing in math because they don’t see it as necessary. Whatever I think about CCSS, and I have fewer issues with the math standards at sixth grade than with other parts of it, I do feel they should be able to write about what they are doing in all subjects. I don’t see this as a “common core” thing, but a learning and analysis skill.

They are more innocent as a whole than prior classes. We’re reading Hatchet a typical novel to assign in sixth grade, and they had a very hard time with the part where Brian talks about attempting (but pulling back from) killing himself in despair over being lost in the woods. They didn’t like it when we read that part, and when I asked them about important things that had happened that week in our weekly writing assessment, they ALL avoided writing about it. I had to talk to them about it a couple times. They are not happy with it because they are probably figuring that Brian will live so he shouldn’t kill himself. I had to talk to them about understanding that while they may not agree with his decision to attempt to take his life, to try to understand the despair he is feeling, and they seem to be comfortable with that.

I have the weekly process down, and the kids seem to as well. We’ve done the weekly writing assessments I assign on what we’ve covered that week in the text and novel we are reading. They write a short response on Friday and revise and edit based on my grading feedback on Monday. Most are understanding my feedback, and are able to revise and edit based on that. I’m going to move to peer editing with the next unit, and also look at having them do their writing online on a wiki. I haven’t figured out which to try first, but I’m leaning towards having them stick to paper.

I’m having students come in once a week for inclusion time. I LOVE doing this, as the kids are great, and they come with a marvelous aide who is very intelligent and capable. He is a gardening expert and we have a native plant habitat at our school site. He’s formed the kids into groups that are assigned a particular area, and they are investigating their part of the garden and sharing what they find. This is MUCH more enjoyable for them and for me. He will likely also have a group working on the square foot garden planting bed assigned to our class, which I am in no way capable of doing given my well-earned black thumb. It’s nice sharing teaching duties.

You can see pictures from our garden and classroom here.

Image credit: 5 by cokeisit7, on Flickr