Yes, as you can probably tell from my oh-so-interesting Title, there hasn't been a whole lot of exciting goings ons around here.
I just finished typing my 35th theme rubric comment (for those of you who need a definition of "rubric" (and I did when I read my JacksonFive contract for the first time but now I like saying it - it sounds all official teacher-ish. Anyway, you can check out this groovy website: http://www.teach-nology.com/tutorials/teaching/rubrics/, which uses a lot of big words. Basically a rubric is an assessment of the skills the students learned in class. Like a test, only a lot fancier and harder on the teacher).
Mostly, I meet with the students one-on-one while all the other students watch a movie, and I ask the student questions based on the theme we learned that month. If they answer without any prompting from me, I check the "No Teacher Help" box. If they need a little prompting from me, I check the "Little Teacher Help" box. There's also a "Moderate Teacher Help" and "Must Have Teacher Help" boxes. Then after I figure out where to put all the little checks, I have to type a 4-5 sentence long comment about how the student did in the theme. It takes a lot of my time, especially since I have two afternoon classes now.
That's just the theme rubrics, which we do once a month. Once a semester, we also do general rubrics, which is an overall assessment of their speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills. It takes a lot of time to assess where each check should go for each student there's like a million little boxes to check. Blah. But at least I don't have to grade homework.
Anyway, I'm caught up for a month at least. Next month the theme rubrics and general rubrics are all due in the same week so I will have over 70 rubric papers and comments to write. That's...a LOT.
But I still like teaching, regardless of the millions of little dancing check marks that are currently floating before my eyes as a result of me staring at them for the past couple of hours.
I picked out my Christmas songs for the JacksonFive christmas program and I start teaching them tomorrow (oh happy! Christmas is starting!). The Dolphin class, year 1, will be singing "I'm the Happiest christmas Tree" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqnjGEg0PVo&feature=fvsr and "C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f7SE3zOtXE&p=FF5D74CE72FF8092&playnext=1&index=48
And Bumblebees will be singing: "One King" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OODyWYnkTl8 and "Beautiful Saviour" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCleEjxB-jI
In case you're interested in a sneak peek. And I will be teaching the Bumblebees sign language to both One King and Beautiful Saviour, which will be a lot of work, but both songs are BEAUTIFUL and will be absolutely amazing with the sign language. My co-worker Karen knows sign language so she's an invaluable resource when it comes to things like this. Actually sign language is quite fascination when you learn it. I'm intrigued.
anyhoo, as far as anything else goes, there's not been much else going, really. I'd like to report some adventures, but there haven't really been any. Samson is doing some mischief I hear in the corner so I'm going to go check it out. Hopefully my next post will be more adventurous and interesting. :)
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