Get your own
 diary at DiaryLand.com! contact me older entries newest entry

2004-09-14 - 3:53 p.m.

Today was slightly better than yesterday.

Still no one showed up for my second English class - but that was a high point.

The girl who stormed out of my class yesterday showed up today for a different class. I let her stay (which in hindsight was a mistake) because at the time there was only one other kid in my class and I figured it was better than having her walk the halls.

A few minutes later though about 7 other students showed up. These are my juniors and I fear that they smell the blood in the water.

One kid answered a cell phone call during class in spite of my repeated requests for him to put it away.

Tomorrow I need to come across as much less timid otherwise they are going to ride roughshod over me all term.

I need to start off by setting up the rules (which I had planned to do yesterday - had anyone showed up) I held off doing it today because I'm still expecting more students and, to be honest, I'm still unsure of how to do it.

I want the kids to come up with the rules themselves because then I think that they will respect them more.

I need a good motivational "Do Now" to get them started. For those of you who aren't teachers, or who haven't been students in a while - the Do Now is a brief assignment that is on the board for them to get started on as soon as they come in.

For example, today's Do Now was: How can you tell if someone is lying? I used it to lead into an icebreaker game called Two Truths and a Lie.

I had the students write three statements about themselves - two of which were true and one which was a lie. Then they had to read them aloud and the class would ask three questions and then vote on which we believed was the lie.

It worked out pretty well with both my sophomores and my juniors.

Now I need to come up with something to introduce the idea of rules tomorrow.

Any suggestions?

previous - next

about me - read my profile! read other Diar
yLand diaries! recommend my diary to a friend! Get
 your own fun + free diary at DiaryLand.com!