it's almost friday

so i started the story flowers for algernontoday with my most challenging class. i'm not sure if i've explain this yet, but my school is tracked in some ways and some students who have standardized test scores below a certain cut off have to take double math or double english classes. i teach one of the double english classes (8th graders) as well as two single 8th grade english classes and one single 7th grade class. anyways, let me try to link this together because i realize i seem unfocused so far. basically, the reason i brought up flowers for algernon is that i started playing the CD for my double 8th grade english class today, and i am trying to put together lesson plans for the coming few days/weeks that will be relevant and interesting for all of my students, for the story. i am thinking about doing a portfolio-type project for the story (we are not reading the whole book, just the short story). so my double class is by far the most challenging and frustrating, and i have started to realize that while i'm planning, i am always thinking about them, whether something will work for them, how it will work for them, if they will like it and respond and want to focus and how i can help make that happen. basically, they are my most frustrating class but i also wouldn't want to teach without teaching them also. it's odd because even within my teaching assignment i have a significant achievement gap--so the idea of closing the achievement gap is very interesting to me because it's within my own classroom--my school has a whole range of skill levels.

anyways, just pontificating.

had a lot of parent contact yesterday. it resulted in one parent coming in for a conference this morning, and another one is visiting a class tommorow afternoon. should be interesting.

i think that the best thing that happened is that i put books into the hands of two different kids during SSR who often aren't engaged readers--they sit and flip through books for the 20 minutes a day of silent reading. i have a black boy who often asks to sit outside and read. i have been letting him, but i've noticed that he's not reading much at all. he had a book with a black family on the cover, and when i asked him why he chose it he said "i don't know--the cover...." i guessed that he related to the pictures on the cover and decided to choose that book. unfortunately, it was a somewhat high-level book and also started off really abstractly. i asked his permission to help him find a new book--i figured i could find something more appealing. he waited for me to find him something. i went into a book box that i had in my room, which i got from the librarian, and found a book whose summary said it was about a girl in the projects and about some of her experiences. it didn't explicitly say that it was about a black family, but it was implied. the print was pretty big and it looked at a glance like a more manageable reading level for my student, so i figured i would give it a try. i was really up front with him about the topic, and he was into the title. he spent about 10 minutes reading it, and when i came outside to find him at the end of the reading time, i asked him how it was. he said he liked it. i asked if he wanted to take it home, and he said that he did. wow!!! that was so exciting. he is apparently a really hard kid to work with so who knows what will happen with him, but he was great today. maybe it is just those little things....yay for books!

well, it's time to go work on my flowers for algernon lesson plan for tommorow...thanks for listening as always.