Today I subbed in a middle school Spanish class. This class is different from the usual Spanish or foreign language classes that I've subbed in. It's called "two-way immersion" -- in other words, there are just as many native Spanish speakers who know very little English as there are native English speakers who know very little Spanish.
The class is taught mostly in Spanish. Fortunately, there are special aides who speak the language, so I don't have to embarrass myself with my lack of Spanish skills. Of course, this also means that there is no "Day in the Life" today, since these aides handle the classroom management.
There are two eighth grade classes and three seventh grade classes. The older students are reading El Principe de la Niebla by Carlos Ruiz-Zafon -- a novel I know nothing about. The younger kids are reading a book that I do know -- House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (in Spanish, of course).
Even in this Spanish class, there are many things that remind me of the old charter school. In the seventh grade classes, the two aides and I divide the students into Learning Centers. The students are sitting in six groups of four. Each aide takes one quartet, leaving the other four quartets to work on their Chromebooks. The groups rotate every ten minutes.
The eighth graders read and answer questions on their own. But during the last ten minutes of class, there is a vocabulary game on Quizlet. First, the aide loads Quizlet on her computer, and it generates a code which we project onto the front screen. The students enter the codes on Chromebooks. After all students have joined the game, Quizlet divides the students into groups of at most four, and gives each group an animal name in Spanish. Then the students play the game. The first group to reach 12 points is the winning team.
Even though I didn't play any such game at the old charter school, this set-up of entering a code and having the students join reminds me of the SBAC portal. During SBAC Prep I had to generate a code for the students to take the practice tests -- and I assume that the same is true for the actual test. But unfortunately, two years ago the SBAC website kept failing, and students kept getting kicked out when they tried to take the practice tests.
There's one more thing today that reminds me of the old charter school. The regular teacher wakes up sick today and so she hasn't prepared a sub lesson plan. And so she ends up emailing lesson plans to the office secretary (who in turn prints them up for me) as well as to her main aide.
Recall that my old classroom at the old charter school had a student support aide. (She was a much better classroom manager than I was, and so students often listened to her instead of me.) Anyway, I almost never communicated with her except face-to-face in my classroom. I think only once did I ever email her (when she was taking some photos of my classroom for me), and I certainly never attempted to phone her or text her. It never even occurred to me to ask for her phone number!
This lack of communication between me and my aide is completely my fault -- yet it wasn't until I subbed in this district when I realized it. Several teachers have much wider lines of communication with their aides than I did. This would have been especially helpful back on the day my car broke down (the day of the election).
Meanwhile, this is the second day of a two-day Performance Task on the blog, so there's no worksheet for me to post today. Hopefully our students can figure out the answer. As a hint, students should first try proving that the figure is a rectangle (which requires four slope calculations). Two distance calculations (length and width) are need to confirm that the rectangle is a square. The Midpoint Formula given on this page is a red herring, as it's not needed.
And so thus ends this rather short (at least by my standards) post!
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