Teaching Mrs. Ryan

   The school district I am in has cumulative tests covering everything taught each six weeks.  The twist is, these tests are made by administrators and not teachers.  This really isn't a problem to me.  It is a learning tool for me and a teachable moment for my students on the importance of all material covered in class.       We as teachers can really get bogged down in the variables of a test like this.  By that I mean, oh the test question was worded funny or well they were only given one chance to show mastery on this, my students are _______ fill in the blanks, thoughts, and reasoning.  The one thing my school district did was have us put our scores up standard by standard right next to every other teacher in the district who had to teach the same thing we did.  My oh my did I fall short!  I say I fell short even though I had great reasoning as to why my scores looked the way they did... but upon further reflection ...

     The name of the game is engagement, but let us all be honest with each other; if you aren't targeted about your engagement, then it is just fluff.  I think I spend about 1/2 of my waking hours thinking of ways I could incorporate cross-curricular and real-world items into my lesson plans.  Shouldn't we all be though?  Well... maybe not spend 1/2 your waking hours thinking about it, but definitely incorporating cross-curricular and real-world items into your classroom.  I always tell my parents life is not a worksheet, but let's be honest... sometimes you ARE stuck with using them!  I like to break away as much as possible!  Sometimes though, those angelic (cough) students of mine could care less.  We know they don't!  They don't care how much of our own money we spent, how long we spent planning something just for them, the only thing they care about is whether it is fun, and not "boring".        I would l...