Teaching Mrs. Ryan

I have made it through to the end of my Fall Semester and my kids are approaching the end of their first semester.  Since I last wrote, my teacher returned from maternity leave and I now find myself teaching 5th grade students in Science while their teacher is out on maternity leave.  WHAT A DIFFERENCE!  This is a positively eye opening experience to be with so many different grade levels and getting the opportunity to teach two different subjects. I will be the first to admit that Science is not my best subject.  I am having to work much harder to deliver the kind of education these students deserve and along the way I am learning so much as well.  For starters, there is a HUGE difference between a 5th grade brain and a 7th grade brain.  There is a HUGE difference between a 5th grade brain and a 6th grade brain.  I think Mrs. Ryan's brain is going to explode! Science was always the subject I had to study for.  I was the student who didn't hav...

It doesn't seem like 10 weeks have already passed, but they have flown in a whirlwind of activity.  Student lesson plans, class, kids, tests, and of course there is a life outside of schools!  My 5 children, my poor neglected husband, and my poor neglected house! What I want to share though was a really great activity I did with all my students, 6th and 7th graders alike, and it was such a success.  I started out with a day I needed to fill an activity with, and I thought that a web quest about something related to math would be a great thing.  I found a great web quest already done up online.  It is HERE .   And I thought how cool.  I could do this.  The only problem was that when I got into school none of the links would open in the school.  Everything was fire walled.  So what I did was take the questions and the formats and play around at school to give the kids some links that they could actually open in the school so they co...

Well I must admit I thought we were rocking along in math class, and then I get to test day.  I realize two things: 1)  The kids don't know the material like I thought they did. 2) Since so many of them don't get it, I know the problem is me. So today I am spending time trying to find a million ways to teach my kids about positive and negative integers and about greatest common factor and least common multiple (this for my 6th graders) so that we can retest on Wednesday.  I feel bad for the kids that completely aced my test, but I'm more worried about the ones that failed dramatically.  20%, 30%, and yes I even had a 0%. It is official.  Come Monday I will be off track on the lesson plan the teacher has left for me to teach.  It is also official that my teacher will be coming back November 16th, and I need to ensure when she comes back in it was like she never left.  There is a lot of pressure for a long term substitute.  It is much more d...

I couldn't stand to wait too long because I wanted to demo my new pen to my students.  Right now I'm working on a math website for them so that they have a place to go straight to for help with their math topics or math homework.  I'm doing this through a website called CourseSites which is free for up to 5 classes.  Currently I'm only  teaching 6th and 7th graders, so I'd really only need two classes, but if I broke them up by the 5 periods I teach, then I'd need all 5.  Unfortunately I can't show you the site as its an invitation only, and  I only want my students and their parents to have access, but I can show you my first pencast I've made for my 6th graders! 1-Subject Notebook 5 p. 1 brought to you by Livescribe I've noticed several things after viewing my pencast: 1)  I say "so" a lot! 2) It is much easier to teach to active students than to talk out loud to a sheet of paper, and picture my students being there.  I'm ...

I finally figured out how to work my little interactive white board tablet in my room.  I used it on Friday and my kids loved it.  I like it to, and it was really my inspiration behind getting my Echo smart pen.  When trying to figure out how to use my interactive white board tablet (we will call it IWBT) I thought well I'll just google it and go from there.  Turns out... it isn't made anymore.  Never the less, I was able to figure out what I was doing, and it is great for my classroom.   It operates a lot like a Think Pad.  At any rate, I've seen several blog post referring to smart pens and LiveScribe on several blogs I subscribe to and I thought I would check it out.  I found an Echo pen in Best Buy and fell in love.  I was on a spending splurge today and decided this was going to go one of two ways.  I either was going to get an iPad, or a Smart Pen.  Well... I got the Smart Pen. So I've been sitting at home and right now...

Last night in class, we watched a few videos on You Tube about power teaching.  I will admit all I could think about was "no way".  My kids would look at me like I was crazy, and I would probably go crazy!  To give you an indication of what I'm talking about, I've attached a video for your viewing pleasure! Today while reviewing for the upcoming 6 weeks tests, I found myself telling my students about this crazy video we had to watch in school the night before.  My students get a kick out of knowing that I'm in school with them too.  They know Mrs. Ryan has homework!! So in a joking manner, I talked to them about power teaching, and then I walked them through a few exercises.  And yes, I even made up my own for telling them to be quiet.... and then the funniest thing happened.   I found myself doing some of the same management behaviors in class.  I found that I was telling them to do things that power teaching required.  And, I found I...

To say the last 3 weeks have been informative would be an understatement.  I can say without hesitation that I have learned more from my kids than they've learned from me.  I wish I could say it has been all sunshine and roses, but that is definitely not the case.  In fact, it has been hard, exhaustive work, but I sure do love it! While I've been working on differentiating my instruction by doing different activities, modeling, visuals, and group work, my main focus has been about classroom management.  The first week the students seemed to be wary of me since I was a new grown up, but by the end of the week, they were definitely testing the waters to see what they could get away with. So, when I began my second week, I began to get a bit more strict about what was going on in the classroom. One of the things I did was grade the work we did in class together.  This helped me for a variety of reasons.  The first thing was that I could tell when I was tea...