Monday, October 12, 2009
Yucky Mondays
I have the hardest time "playing the game" on Mondays. I have no idea why this is, since I usually spend my weekends catching up on sleep. I'm cranky on Mondays, have no energy, and generally don't want to be here. So far, I've been planning for this lack of energy and having a reading or writing day on Mondays. That way, my students are still making progress, but I'm not required to entertain them. Are there any other suggestions for ways to make it through Mondays? It's also super hard right now because it's dark when I get to school and wicked cold. We've been sitting at about 20 degrees below normal temps for the last two weeks. Yikes!
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Wow! Colder there than in Alaska, for sure, at least in this part of Alaska.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite part of Mondays is to ask them what they did over the weekend. Somebody--maybe Ben--said to tell them they can't be boring. If they slept, make it on a beach in Tahiti. If they talked on the phone, make it with a celebrity. Still, we talk about how much homework kids had, what classes the homework was in, where kids went, who danced with whom at Homecoming, whose kick won the football game, and so on. One kid is taking notes, and another is writing a quiz, so that way I don't have to remember anything. I try hard to remember to stop in time to give the quiz. And if kids are getting a bit out of hand, I stop and have them use the words that have gathered on the board to write about their weekend. Sometimes that's how we start. I love Mondays--truly no planning, when it goes well. But if it slows down, I pull one of those activity words that they need and start doing a one-word story with it.
Michele
How do you get them to talk so much when their vocab is so limited? Since I'm shooting for 100% understanding, I'm having a hard time finding questions to ask them that they will understand. We always start Monday with talking about what they did over the weekend, but it doesn't take very long because their language is so limited at this point...what do you do?
ReplyDeleteIrrespective of the L2 on Monday discussion, you can always bail to a dictation (explained on "resources" then "handouts" on my site). Why not? What's with the big L2 discussion deal on Monday? A lot of folks use it to effect, but, if I really didn't want to be there on a Monday, I would grind out some PQA, try to stretch it into some extended PQA, and then, fifteen or twenty minutes into the class, do a dictation on whatever was said (you have the story book recorder in class to give you the stuff you need to read on the dictee). I know, I know, it's all about CI. But hey, dictation is a BIG time eater when you have those kinds of Mondays. I think we all have this pressure to perform thing way out of balance. My prayer is that we just get off of that "gotta be great" bandwagon and learn to breathe easily and be with the kids and hear what they say and just relax.
ReplyDeleteWhew! That was my whole mindset last year. I was pregnant and sick and just needed to get through it. There were a lot of days where I figured out ways to "teach" by sitting down and having the kids do most of the work. Not ideal in the TPRS classroom, but I wasn't teaching that way yet. I have lessened the pressure I put on myself...I have my shrink to thank for that!! The phrase that just popped into my head is "Just keep swimming...just keep swimming..."
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