As I said in my last post, first semester was a firestorm! We hosted a family of five while they were between houses, I took a grad level class, I increased my work load by being full-time at one school (meaning an extra class and an extra prep...I now teach 6 classes with 3 preps)... It was busy! Plus, we, as a department, are making the jump to full-time standards-based grading.
Reflecting on the first semester, I think I did a pretty good job. We just got back from a trip to Quebec and my students did a fairly good job of communicating. They were blurting out stuff in French and didn't seem as afraid as kids from years past to try. I only had one student that I've had for more than a year take the trip, so I wonder what my results will be in the future. Another French teacher with kids on the trip commented that it seemed like my kids knew more than her kids, which is nice to hear. After her first year of teaching, she is ready to jump to TPRS for next year. Yippee! We could have all TPRS for French at the jr. high level!! Now what the high school has to say about that...we'll see...
I was a little down on myself at the end of first semester, thinking that I wasn't doing a very good job. I think it's because I started Pirates a little too early and didn't do enough comprehension checks and I lost a lot of kids. Now that we've started back on stories, I feel like they are getting the hang of things again, but that was a rough spot. Live and Learn
I hope to blog every day (as I said I would do at one point this year), but right now, having just returned from Canada, my brain is fried and I'm ready to go home and take a nap!
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