Kontan’s Place

Yesterday was the start of summer session II. Really good day. I have 11 students this term. Eight have taken my class once before. This time they are working diligently to pass. I’m doing more of the differentiated instruction strategies. Call it practice for the upcoming year. I do these often, but get away from them for some reason. I don’t know why. I guess it is the going back to the familiar. DI strategies are not difficult, but they do require planning. If you have no idea what I am talking about, here is a site that explains more about differentiated instruction. Quick summary…Differentiated instruction applies an approach to teaching and learning so that students have multiple options for taking in information and making sense of ideas. The model of differentiated instruction requires teachers to be flexible in their approach to teaching and adjusting the curriculum and presentation of information to learners rather than expecting students to modify themselves for the curriculum. Classroom teaching is a blend of whole-class, group and individual instruction. Many activities are centered around peer to peer instruction. What I found yesterday is that some students have a difficult time being creative in their approach to learning information. The old way obviously didn’t work for them, but they are not willing to give it up. (Much like me not continuing DI strategies on a regular basis.) I am requiring that all students use the combined method (or Cornell method) of note-taking where they divide the paper with a small column on the left and a larger column on the right. At the bottom of the page is a box for summarizing the days notes. The left column is used for terms, topics, and header thoughts. The right column is used for supplemental information explaining the topic. A few people complain that it is a waste of paper. I can see why they say this, it does use more paper. However, I took five small pieces of paper. Four yellow and one white. I scrunched them into little balls then chose a student to help with this example. I told the student that he was to catch only the white ball. Sure no problem he thought. When I threw the five balls of paper at him he had trouble distinguishing which ball was which and couldn’t catch any of them. When I threw them individually he was able to catch the white ball of paper. Whether this was the best method of getting my point across or not, it seem to make sense to them. Your brain deals better when the information is clear, concise, and not jumbled together. I’m hoping to keep them consistently organized and maybe it will stick. Jumping thoughts again, I tend to do that, yesterday I had them teach each other five counties of their assigned district. They could teach them any way they wanted. The more creative students were the better their group did on their counties in that section. Individually the students did very well in their assigned section and not as well in the others. We’re going to talk about that today and how they chose to learn their five counties. It is important for me to help them figure out how they learn. I’m going on a net hunt for a test that helps one figure out their learning style. I am mostly visual, but the more styles you include the better I do.

Below I have listed several sites that further explain differentiated instruction and strategies. I really haven’t found that truly-spectacular-everyone-must-check-it-out site yet. If you know what it is, please share…have a great day!

in a nutshell

decent article

strategies and links to more

lesson plans!

Had our final game tonight. It didn’t go too well. We had an awesome game last week. Hitting good, fielding well, and coming out on top. Tonight…we hit good, but they fielded better. They just kept knocking the down. Still fun to play. I’ll have a clear memory of this game for at least a week or so. There is the imprint of a ball on my righ thigh. OMG it hurts. Actually, right now it is only a quarter sized blue mark with softball sized red. Pain circle is softball sized. Playing short, ran up to scoop what I thought was going to be on the ground and it bounced. Part of it.

I was going to tell you about the workshop I had to attend today, but think I’ll save it for tomorrow. Tired.

Sorry not too exciting. Thanks for stopping by. happy day….

I would like to say congratulations to 20 of my 26 summer school students. They have completed the course and passed…some of them barely. I had several fail the class for the second (or third) time. This amazes me. Let me tell you how I conduct my class in the summer…too easy.

~ We cover one chapter per day (each day is equal to one week of school)

~ Each morning, excluding the first, I give a ten question test (no book, no notes) on the material from day previous.

~ Each day at 2:15 students will be given an accountability quiz on the work assigned that day. They are allowed to use their work, their work only, not that of their neighbor, and not their book.

~ Each day at 3:00 students take chapter test with various question types (matching, multiple choice, sometimes short answer) and they are allowed to use all notes, work, and their book. Some of the questions are straight knowledge based, but many move up Bloom’s taxonomy.

You would think that open note/open book would result in excellent test scores. NOPE. The students have limited ability when it comes to applying the knowledge. I do not believe they know how to think critically. OK, I know they do not know how.

That’s my goal…teach them how to think…hopefully they will learn the subject matter along the way.

Term 2 starts Tuesday. Differentiated instruction workshop on Monday…woohoo.

summers off my tush.

Just thought I would share the feeling. Last day for this group of kids and they have driven me insane ALL day. It was something like the last day of school only we had a weeks worth of work to do!!! They’re taking their exam now….still have grading to do. The weekend is almost here! TGIF!!!!!!

I would like to thank Mr. Linky for helping me get the linky box working this morning!

I’m back!!! Today I offer you thirteen trials and treats of moving to wordpress…

1. I had no clue where to start

2. FTP…hadn’t heard of it, hadn’t done it, didn’t know how to do it, not a clue where to start. (WOW it is really simple!)

3. I have this REALLY bad habit of not reading instructions and trying to figure things out as I go along. That doesn’t work too well with wordpress.

4. You know those read-me files that you rarely open. OK, maybe it is just me…I open those with every download now. There is valuable information in those. INSTRUCTIONS!

5. I can NOT stress enough that the phrase on wordpress “Things you need to know before installing wordpress” is not just a suggested read. Kind of important.

6. PHP and HTML are not the same. Similar, but not the same. If byou know HTML you can figure out PHP…or maybe that is still my newbie status showing…
7. You can’t just paste a new theme into the browser. You have to download all the parts. Upload to the server and then customize.

8. Wordpress is not just one long template. It is divided by parts of the page. Which, if I had STARTED blogging with wordpress this would have made perfect sense, but since I started with Blogger…well, let’s just say it makes perfect sense now.

9. My calendar still doesn’t work. When I paste the code into the template the calendar extends out of the sidebar and goes ALL the way into the post category.

10. My live calendar or whatever plugin has a calendar that is a little too big so I can’t make it work either.

11. Plug ins are really cool, but the widget thing that is supposed to customize my sidebar funktifies it. I kinda like it like it is.

12. I really like the set up. It seems you have a lot more control and I love the category thing…I’m on number 12 here so I’m just going to include several. I really like that you can look at all your comments instead of going to several different sites (if you use haloscan or whatever). Importing blogger content was easy and with the category deal I am able to consolidate blog content and organize it for easy find later. Very OCD friendly!

13. I can access my blog from school without the filter Nazi stopping it! (too bad I can’t get to all of yours.

BTW, what’s a post slug?

I think Jem has called Tiki “hot dog” a few too many times. I have a game at 6:15 tonight so dinner consists of stove top hot dogs. As I prepared Tweety’s hot dog I call her into the kitchen…”TWEEEEEETY”….”ma’am?” “Hot dog!” pitter patter pitter patter jingle-jingle. Tiki comes running.

ummmm, not what I meant little dog.

I’m sitting here watching my 22 summer school students work and am growing increasingly frustrated. If you are having to sit through a class for the second time it should be easier, right? You SHOULD be more motivated to pass the second time around, right? I just don’t get these kids! Some STILL want to sleep. Some STILL refuse to do the work. Some still refuse to learn the material. I just don’t get it! How can you sit through a class and not know something as basic as what the Civil War was?!?!?! NO the FRENCH did not win. NO the British did not win, and ABSOLUTELY NO the South did not win, but thank you for choosing a side that was actually in it! According to these students the Revolutionary war freed the slaves, and just so you know that took place around 1960. WTH!!! Sorry, but geegads! 97% of my summer school kids are black, 2% are white, and 1 is mixede. SHOULDN’T, by nature of cultural heritage, I BE GETTING BETTER ANSWERS HERE! OMfreakinGOSH!

Now to counter that, students that rarely, if ever succeed in class are really doing well. It is so great to see their faces light up at success.

It is time now that I return to the grindstone. Just needed to vent before I let loose on the little brats darlings.

We go through life, day to day, not realizing just how many people we impact. We don’t realize because we aren’t paying attention and don’t take the time to realize. Sometimes we even avoid the opportunities to impact another life. Again, this is because we refuse to take the time.

As I rushed to church this morning I was frustrated with my kids. Lately they stay at each other and it is obnoxious. Running late, as usual, we are walking to the door and I’m trying to relax. I pointed the oldest in the right direction, then took the youngest, THEN had to walk back to the other side of the building to give something to the oldest. It was then that I found out my attempts to relax didn’t work. Met our neighbor and he comments that I looked none too happy walking across the lot. I briefly unloaded the reason for my frustration. He understands, he has three of his own and is a stay at home dad. As Mr. Mom he has his own frustrations.

It was during the service that I started thinking about his comment. What are you portraying to people? Frustration? Unhappiness? Smiles? I’m not saying hide your feelings. I’m thinking that we should evaluate them. Kids are going to be kids. No reason to show such frustration when it REALLY is not that big of a deal. Deep breath. Smile through it. Point is, sometimes to work through our frustration and feel better all it takes is a deep breath and a smile. Just think what your smile can do for someone else. Ever smiled at someone and seen their whole demeanor relax? Try it sometime. You’ll probably feel better too.

Here is the theme song for this months series of sermons…one of my favorites:

Life Means So Much: Chris Rice

Every day is a journal page
Every man holds a quill and ink
And there’s plenty of room for writing in
All we do is believe and think
So will you compose a curse
Or will today bring the blessing
Fill the page with rhyming verse
Or some random sketching

Teach us to count the days
Teach us to make the days count
Lead us in better ways
That somehow our souls forgot
Life means so much
Life means so much
Life means so much

Every day is a bank account
And time is our currency
So nobody’s rich, nobody’s poor
We get 24 hours each
So how are you gonna spend
Will you invest, or squander
Try to get ahead
Or help someone who’s under

Teach us to count the days
Teach us to make the days count
Lead us in better ways
That somehow our souls forgot
Life means so much
Life means so much
Life means so much

Has anybody ever lived who knew the value of a life
And don’t you think giving is all
What proves the worth of yours and mine

Teach us to count the days
Teach us to make the days count
Lead us in better ways
That somehow our souls forgot
Life means so much

Every day is a gift you’ve been given
Make the most of the time every minute you’re living

Hello!  Thank you for stopping by, so nice to have you today.  Welcome to my new place.  As many know I have been working on Kontan’s place for a while now. I tried various programs to set up a site and even tried directing Blogger here.  As Sage reminded me when I started this latest venture, that didn’t work too well. As you can see, embarking on wordpress operations turned out OK.

I started looking at wordpress a few months ago.  The school year was so busy and I just couldn’t figure it out.  The summer is still busy, but I figure if I’m teaching from 7:45 utnil 3:45 I’m not bringing anything home so I can spend an hour or so at night working on this.  Only this time, I read the instructions!  If you are considering WP let me stress to you the importance of reading ALL instructions before you start.  It really isn’t hard if you have an idea of what you are doing.  However, if you miss a part of the instruction process it will not work and it will drive you nuts.  That is where my webhost came in handy.

I use 1and1 as my host. Their customer service is pretty good. I have had only one problem with a service call and that was a miscommunication error.  Usually your wait time for help is short. With the right software you can give them visual access to your computer so that they can see what you have done wrong and talk you through fixing it.  I had pointed my FTP to the wrong spot this last time.  With just a few clicks WP was up and going. I host my teaching website there too.

Since you’re here, let  me show you around…

This is the home page where I do the blogging. As you can see there are entry and link categories.  I tried to get all of my links in the correct place.  My post categories include Imports, all entries imported from Blogger, Latte thought, imported posts from Comprehensive Chaos dealing with history and reading, Frappes are blogthings that amuse me, Flavor of the day is the miscellaneous catch all for the day to day posts.

You can also visit the barista page. That is the about me page.  Currently, I haven’t figured out how to point the link to the about me page if you are not on the home page.  Still working on that part. The mi famiglia page is to tell you about the family.  There you will learn about who I have nicknamed what and why.  The espresso page is where you will find a shot of color with photos that I find interesting and pics of the family.  Of course if you have read my site before and wanted to find something specific there is the search feature that will take you to the bottom of the page.  It is most helpful if you are looking for a history post from compchaos.

As you can see there are various features that I didn’t have at blogger. It is also less “busy”.  I love this simple coffe and butterfly look.  The coffee cup came with the template. I added the title and butterfly for kontan flavor.  Since there were butterflies included in the comment template I thought it would be appropriate.  This look is very fitting for me.  Pretty mellow, but has the coffee and butterfly which most who know me would associate with me.  I’m a coffee nut and the butterfly thing just sort of happened.  OH, btw, look up at your URL search bar.  Isn’t that a neat little thing.  That is a favicon, you can create and insert your own favicon.ico here.  Working with the template is similar to working with blogger templates. It uses php instead of html, but if you figured out how to manipulate your html template it is the same process to figure out WP templates.  The help forums are top notch and you can almost always find what you are looking for or someone to point you to it.  I find google searches of what I want and including wordpress in the search usually leads me right there.

I have rambled enough. I allowed myself til only 8 AM to create an entry and it is 6 past now.  Have a great day!