Physical Learning Environment
I've tried to create a visually appealing and interesting environment in the classroom. I've put up informational posters all over the room that I've been collecting since 2009. Many of the posters I've gotten from the Natural Science Museum in Jackson where I volunteered. I like that this gives students educational things to look at, but occasionally I catch them reading my snake posters rather than working on assignments. I guess if they're going to stare at the wall, it's better that there is something there to read other than graffiti. My classroom is huge and has a laboratory inside of it. I have been trying to be better about using the space to my advantage and moving the kids into the lab more. I figure that even if we are doing something in the lab that we could do in the normal desks, the kids at least are getting a change in environment, breaking up the monotony of a ninety-minute class staying in the same seats. Classroom Climate Year 1 Climate: "Three of my other classes have a CHAOTIC environment. They come in the door ambushing me with questions and it sets the tone for a mess from the beginning. "CAN I GO TO THE BATHROOM?" "WHAT ARE WE DOING TODAY?" "CAN I HAVE A PENCIL?" "ARE YOU MAD OLE MISS LOST?" "I'M HUNGRY!!!" "CAN I TAKE A NAP TODAY?" No. No. No. You know where my pencils are. Yes I am mad about it. Please just sit down and let me try to start this class with an ounce of sanity. 5 minutes of straight nuts - kids up, walking around the room, hollering. "Class, this is not how we should start. We know we should immediately be working on the bell ringer silently in our desks." It's a waste of breath. Teaching procedures has been a flop. They think it's funny." Year 2 Climate: I've almost mastered the climate I want in my room. There are procedures, expectations, and the room is orderly, but without having to constantly talk about it. Yes, someone will turn around and ask for a pencil from another kid. Yes, kids get up to sharpen that pencil without asking me first. Do I care? No. No one yells in my room. There's never more than one person up at a time. I've achieved the type of classroom that I want organically because the things that I don't like I addressed from day 1 and continued to get mad about and the things I don't care about I never even mentioned. Reaching the Kids As all of us know by now, not every student loves to learn, has an easy time learning, or even cares to learn. Despite this, we need to do everything we can as educators to reach the masses – as many different students in as many different ways as possible. Even if I didn’t feel the need to reach the hard-to-reach due to my passion for education (blame pregnancy), I have to reach almost everyone because of the almighty state test. Every student who fails the state test feels like a personal failure – what didn’t I do to reach him/her? What could I have done differently to better reach a larger percentage of students? In my second year, I’ve tried some new things and done more of some old things that I feel add variety to the classroom and reinforce the curriculum. Although hard to come by, real (or seemingly real) experiments and the use of real lab equipment always seem to drive home concepts for EVERYONE. I can stand up and talk about independent variables and dependent variables all day long, but when I have every student identify them in a salt tolerance in plant germination lab, they all actually seem to “get it.” Explaining blood types with a PowerPoint or reading may get most students where I need them, but when I find a lab kit in the supply closet that has four people’s “blood” (a little lie for the sake of learning never hurt anyone) and have students pour in “serum” that can detect A antigens and determine the blood type, suddenly EVERYONE in the room understands. Technology has been my greatest friend this year. YouTube videos provide visuals that I cannot, and putting links on my website for students to watch again on there own allows for reinforcement. A new thing I’ve used this year is the plethora of bad remakes of popular songs with lyrics about biology. As annoying as they are, they make students laugh and sing, therefore they’re interacting with the content and often memorizing some of it. (Biology teachers – Central Dogma Song to the tune of Soulja Boy’s Kiss Me Thru The Phone works wonders when you get to molecular genetics.) My district has a subscription to USA Test Prep as well, which allows me to assign games to students, which they love. It’s a lot easier to get students to answer state test questions when a correct answer gives them ammo for the cannon on their pirate ship in a video game. I love to assign these games for students who finish their other online assignments early. As always, I love review games and interactive cooperative learning methods to reinforce content. I’ve included a picture of “Mutations Stations,” which we did last year, where students must compare incorrect sentences to a chromosomal mutation and then correct it. Although I’m definitely still not reaching every single student, I feel I am reaching a heck of a lot more than I was last year. |