Today I was honored to spend some time talking about teaching and learning with two "novice teachers" from UCLA who will be working with my sixth-period students. I am not used to having other teachers in the classroom, so I admit I am nervous and today when they visited me during my conference period, I think I talked way too much.  I am reflective about my teaching, so I talk about it to anyone who will listen. Hopefully, I didn't chase them away.  All of my students are wonderful with their unique characteristics, but I think my sixth-period will be especially receptive to young teachers from UCLA.  One of them already asked the young lady a slew of questions on Tuesday, their first day with us.

Tomorrow the sixth-period students will continue typing their information writing books. These are little expert texts that they have been working on for several weeks.  Since I don't see my sixth-period every day, they are the one group I share with another teacher, they are behind with their writing.  I am a little anxious about this and I hope I can keep them interested in this project. Tomorrow they will be using the internet to research. I've decided to conduct this differently with this class. Instead of letting them print the information, I'm going to give them five index cards and have them record one quote/note per card, one for each chapter of their book. We'll see how this works out.  I decided to try this after I noticed a couple students' books seem a bit too Wikipedia and not enough expert student. More on this tomorrow!