Week 2 frustrations.

Wide awake and frustrated. My freshmen overall just don't seem to be getting it and I need to figure out what to do.

1. We have gone over directions daily. Read them out loud. Explained what it means when something asks for 3-5 sentences. Broken down a question to analyze what it is asking. And yet I am still, on the fourth online wsq, getting five word answers. It makes me almost not want to do online wsqs because if they did them in their notebook I wouldn't likely get around to reading them and I wouldn't see all this crap!  In all seriousness, I am doing it online because I want to read it. And I know it can only get better. But I am frustrated that it is the fourth one and it still sucks. I like to see improvement.

2. I still have about 20 kids who have submitted nothing all year. But, our school system is still down one week into the school year and I don't have access to their IDs unless I want to look them up one by one, which I don't have time for, so I can do my vlookup that tells me who has turned in what. Sadly, I may it my TA on the annoying task of looking up ID numbers one by one tomorrow. Ugh. I hate assigning tasks simply because I don't want to do them.

3. We are supposed to have our first real flipped classroom day in algebra 1 tomorrow, but I know I am going to only have half the students who watched the video and did the WSQ even though they were all BEGGING me today to be done with "training" and do it on their own. So, I have to decide what I am going to do with those students who didn't watch. I can't have them all call home if there are too many of them. I suppose I could assign detention. I am definitely NOT going to reteach. I definitely WILL have individual talks with them and go over the expectations. I am just frustrated because the lack of responsibility is SO INCREDIBLY APPARENT that it just reminds me what I am fighting against with these younger kids with this new way of teaching and learning. I can't hold their hand and make sure they do it at home. And, when they are used to doing ZERO homework in intermediate school, asking them to do the smallest things seem to be the biggest deal.

4. I spent the weekend making DVDs. I told the students if they needed them they needed to come by after school to pick them up. One girl came by. And she wasn't even the one who asked for them last week. Lack of responsibility again.

5. I don't want to jump right in to homework cards and punishments like detention, but at the same time I don't know what else to do to hold them accountable. I have modeled, I have shown them how, I had them write it in their agendas, I've reminded daily...if they aren't going to do it, I am eventually just going to have to resort to the accountability system our school has in place because these kids are going to fall behind and they need more support.

6. I really wanted to try and have the first parent contact be positive, but at this rate I am going to have to tell a lot of parents that their students are unprepared for class and not doing what they should be. Not exactly the
Best foot to start off on, but I know it needs to be done early so we can nip this in the butt.


7. Ok plans for tomorrow, at
Least in my head. Get students who did watch video started on their practice assignment. Pull students who didn't aside and chat. Get whole class back together and talk about wsqs together and have a whole class wsq chat. Students who didn't watch video will be assigned Thursday after school Detention for 15 minutes and we will Call home at some point on Wed or thurs.
Students will be assigned Concept 5 for hw on we'd nite. Goal is that Thurs in class we can have whole Class wsq chat and then get to work on problems and practice. We will Call home again, but the group Will Be Much Smaller (thinking positive thoughts)

Maybe this Is Too much all At once for my kiddos who are still getting used to high school??

Oh I hope my next post is
More positive ...


PS sorry for all the typos, I am on my iPad!