Week 6 Reflection

As we begin the 6th week of school, I am making a few changes based on all that I have learned so far. I still have too many students struggling in Anatomy and I think that it is because they aren't paying attention during class. It is a very big class and a lot of them have friends in there so they end up talking too much. I decided to try assigning seats, which is something that I should have done on day 1. Yesterday they gave me a hard time about why they had to have new seats or why they were being "treated like children" but it honestly didn't bother me because they need it. All of my classes need a better policy for asking to leave the room because it is becoming distracting. At the start of my afternoon classes it seems like everyone needs to use the bathroom or get a water. I understand that they are coming from lunch or band practice, but it is becoming too much of a hassle at the start of class. So, I started this week by explaining a new policy. When they come into the room and need to leave for any reason they are to take the bee and go. If both bees are gone, they must wait for one to return. If they need to use the bathroom during classtime they can just get up and quietly take the bee and leave. So far it has worked really well and no one has abused the privlege of not having to verbally tell me that they are using the restroom. It has cut down on talking at the start of class.
I also started doing "minute mysteries" with the forensics classes for the first 5-10 minutes of each class period. They really seem to enjoy these and it is a great way to get them excited and involved. It also allows time for students who have left the room for some reason to return without missing important work.
Anatomy is starting a very long and involved chapter with the skeletal system. I have decided to break the chapter up into 2 exams instead of one. First, we will learn the physiology of the system and take an exam on it. We will then focus on the anatomy and the physical locations of bones and take a second exam on those topics. The students seem to be more comfortable with this idea and I am hoping that it makes the chapter easier for them to learn. I am learning most of the material along with them, which is more work, but I think it helps me learn how to explain it so that they understand. I try to explain things the way that I need them explained to remember them. I also try to review constantly throughout class. I am going to try and either begin and/or end every lecture with questions from the previous lessons. By doing this I am hoping that it will stay fresh in their memories. I am excited for this Thursday because we are doing a lab in anatomy that should be a lot of fun. Informative, but more interesting than the lectures and quizzes that they are used to. It should be a nice break for everyone.
I also feel like I am now developing better relationships with my students. While they may not "like me" as much, they are now starting to show more a respectful than a friendly attitude towards me. I conferenced with several anatomy students yesterday, and today almost all of them turned in the necessary work to get caught up with the class. I also had a student ask to take me up on my offer to stay after school on Thur. and help him study for the term quiz. I was excited that he wanted my help, so I offered to all of my students to stay with us on Thursday and review. I am hoping that several of them take advantage of it.
I am also attending a meeting tonight hosted by all 4 of us EFHS interns for the participants and tutors. I have a lot of good information to share with them and I think it should go well! I wanted to write early this week because I have had so much going on and have been making so many changes. I am excited to see how the rest of the week progresses. I will provide an update on Friday and hopefully have some positive changes to report.


It is now the weekend and I must say that I have seen some good results in my classroom this week. I was a little nervous about parent-teacher conferences but it ended up being a great experience! I really enjoyed meeting the families of my students. It helped me to understand a lot of them better. All of the parents were very nice and it felt good to give good reports on most of their children. A lot of them told me how much their son or daughter enjoyed my class and that was great to hear. It was amazing how many parents came in and talked about specific forensics lesson that their student had told them about. The fact that they are going home and talking to their parents about what we are learning in class shows me they must be enjoying it or getting something out of the class.
Thursday I stayed to help students study for their term quiz and 2 of the 3 students that I studied with got perfect scores! This is really impressive for a quiz of 100 anatomy terms! Maybe the rest of the class will learn from this and take me up on my offer next time. I may be giving another test in there soon because I decided to split the skeletal system chapter up into 2 parts instead of 1. We are almost finished with the physiology of the system and with some in-class practice and reviews we may have a test on that part of the system later this week or at the start of next week.
In forensics we are finishing up a week of hair analysis. On Tuesday they will participate in our second inquiry-based crime lab. I will present them with a scenario and they will work in groups to solve the crime. They will again write a hypothesis and procedure, collect data, and analyze their results. I will be taking observational notes for my action research and then giving a quiz and the interest survey afterward. I hope that this lab goes as well, if not better than, the previous inquiry lab. Students are getting used to working in the lab and asking questions about what they are seeing which is very important with this type of learning.