I'm gonna be an teeture

<good to see you Sturgis>

These days it's good to be seen...(and without beeping monitors)

Glad to hear the teaching thing is going well for you.

Are the beeps and whistles helping? You moved back to civilization, to be closer to the machines, yes?

Yup...it's a stones throw away...about 5 blocks. Seems to be going well although I had a setback a little over a week ago...darned fistula gets infected at the worst times...(like there's ever a good time for that?). There is also a progress being made on the kidney front which I am keeping quiet on for now...don't wanna jinx it.

PROGRESS!?!?! Oops <shush> that's good!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhgpfffptltltl.

I am just finishing a paper due out tomorrow. My neck has been in spasm all weekend. I left the house once this weekend for 2 hours (spent all but my outing in PJs). No time to rest. I need to study for a test next saturday which I will likely fail anyway. If I do, that'll be 90 bucks down the drain. Then, still no time to rest, need to read a math book through before the following weekend's first math class.

I guess I'll rest at thanksgiving.

The exam was tough. I was woefully unprepared. And I won't know how I did for weeks....... but, I'm lots more relaxed now.

Good luck, k!

Should be getting results to that test soon.........

I am pleased with myself. I had a brutal few weeks with my current classwork. It's a math class which is exciting for me, but the teacher is hmmmm, hard to explain. I like her, she teaches well, she's excited about math.... all good. But, she is a bit harsh, demanding, and unforgiving. She sort of makes fun of people in a way that leads me to believe it's the way she relates to her family members too. Anyway, we had 4 weeks worth of homework to do in 3 weeks. Last weekend we had to go home friday night and read a chapter as homework (we all work until class, stay in class until 10pm and then had to be back by 8:30am - with driving time, I had 9 hours between leaving and returning to class).

So, this last project inv9ovled interviewing a student to assess their math skills and correlate them to their grade's standards. It seemed impossible at first, but when I got going things fell into place and I had fun. My last bit of homework (which I should be finishing right now) invovles another chapter of the textbook. In this text, I am reading how to teach effectively, and I realize it's sort of the way I teach anyway! I am naturally an affective teacher, it would seem. Mostly. <patting self on back>

<patting littlek on the back>

We always knew you could do it. Good going!

You did. I thank you all for your support!

That sounds like my job. Good to hear things are working out for you.

Good god! Every day?

Thankfully no, but I do have my fair share and I have to be there between 6:30 and 7:00 with a 45 minute commute.

Grrrrrrrrrrrr.................... How can I possibly know how to do a lesson plan if no one has taught me how to do a friggin lesson plan!?!? <breathing. Breathing. Breathing>

The math teacher was incredibly meticulous in what she wanted, but in her meticulousness, she taught us how to make a lesson plan. The math standards are easy to work with. So, they were hard, but I had a good sense of how to go about doing them. These current plans are for social studies. Most of my classmates like this guy better because he is more relaxed, easy-going and funny. I wondered if I was learning what I needed to know. Now I need to get lesson plans written and I don't know what the hell the standards mean when they say students should use the map key to find the locations of countries and cities of africa. I am even more uncertain about how to make a worksheet or quiz for them to show how they do this. I chose this topic because it seemed easy. I can't find any info on the web I'm going crazy!

I may switch back to my original idea of working with the standard that looks at africa's features and how they influenced settlement and commerce.

<breathing> tomorrow's a holiday. I have all day to figure it out..........

Er.... pardon me.

Temporarily shelve the notions of "quiz" and "worksheet".

Think about an educational game--then adapt. The idea of a Lesson Plan is to focus your mind on what the kids are going to accomplish in the next 45 minutes and how.

You can do it.

Some ideas
here

Hi Noddy, yes, thanks. I needed the break. As it was I dreamt that I was making lesson plans. Then I dreamt I was making lesson plans that involved a fighting game I play online. Then I dream-spoke "Hey! I'm synthesizing my work and my play!" Oy. I dunno if I have ever spoken in a dream. I was working on lesson plans for 10 hours straight yesterday.

Thanks Ul. The problem isn't finding things to teach about Africa. The state teaching standards we use are very specific in the things that they want us to teach. This lesson is for 6th grade, a grade I know little about because the schools I've been in stop at 5th grade (6th graders would be 11-12 years old).

Here is the standard I was first going to address for 6th grade: "Explain how the following five factors have influenced settlement and the economies of major African regions and countries. (absolute and relative locations, major physical characteristics, climate, major natural resources and population size)." (standard A.3)

I searched online, I checked two paper atlases - I couldn't find any agreement as to what countries fell into which regions. I had just done a complicated lesson plan on the Maya, Aztec and Inca civilizations for grade 5, so I wanted something simpler (I always tend toward things that are more complex). So, I decided to try a different standard.

"Use a map key to locate countries and major cities in Africa." (standard A.2)

So, I think about map keys - they're the little legends with icons (little picnic tables to represent camp grounds, little carats to indicate mountains, etc). Now I am trying to think about how a little icon would help someone find a country. I tend to either look the country up in the atlas index, or browse the area I know it is in. I use the map key to find parking lots, campgrounds, reststops, diamond mines, etc.

So, I'm wondering how to do this lesson. Do I just have a color key? Orange - Chad, they go and find the orange country and label it Chad? These are 11-12 year olds, that doesn't seem right.

I may go back to the synthesizing standard......

Oof, lesson plans.

Maybe teach Africa, then give them a blank map of Africa and have them label the countries? That'd be hard and seems about what I was doing at that grade level.

OR: A blank map of Africa, with map keys that are essentially hints. Largest importer of this. Capital of that. Home to Idi Amin. Whatever.

There must be some sort of explanation of the standard somewhere without having to guess, though...