What I will do differently this year

The one thing that I will do differently this year is to spend more time driving home my procedures and my rules. Last year I didn't spend as much time on this because I honestly didn't know how rough it could be if I didn't spend time describing each little aspect of what I expected. This year I plan to literally act out my procedures. For my procedures to enter the room before class, I will ask the whole class to go out in the hall and line up against the wall. Then I will continually have the students enter the room according to my procedure until they get it absolutely perfect. There will be no room for students to question my expectations. I also plan on being more firm as I describe my rules to the class. Last year I assumed my students would be respectful because I have rarely been in a school with disrespectful kids. I will no longer make those assumptions.

Another change will come in the form of instruction. More group work, more collaboration. It is clear that students seem to do better when they can talk out complex lessons with their peers. Again, because of management difficulties, last year I was hesitant to allow students to work in groups. I didn't know if they could handle it. Because of the changes I will implement at the outset, I don't foresee having this problem next year.

What's more is that I want to use different instructional techniques. More demonstrations, more class involvement. I felt as if my students were just a bunch of robots last semester. I needed to get them up and out of their seats and get them involved in the lesson. My biggest challenge will be connecting Physical Science to the real world. It's very difficult to make the concept underlying transformers (not the cartoon) applicable to things they do in their everyday activities. Next year, I will find a way to bring Physical Science into their lives whether it’s through video, power point presentations, examples. We’re talking quite a bit in our online class about the transfer of knowledge from the classroom to the real world.