TateFieldExperienceLessonVideo


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 * Journal 1 - 9/24/13 **

I’ve never been to Danville High School before so I did a drive up there on Thursday (I was scheduled to go there Friday) to see exactly where I’d be going. The school is VERY different from the high school I went to. It’s very old-fashioned, the buzzer to change classes scared the living daylights out of me, and it’s very tiny, but it was a nice place! I mostly wrote down a list of questions to ask my mentoring teacher since we were meeting for the first time. I learned that eventually I’ll be teaching 10th grade genre study, and they mostly read short stories and focus on character development within those stories. Many of the students in the classroom have IEPs and need to have accommodations for how they learn and accomplish tasks in the classroom. The class is also co-taught, so when I go back there next Friday, I’m just going to observe to see how things run in the classroom. If I got up there right away, it might be a little overwhelming for the students, having three teachers there. Each student has an interactive reader, and I thought that was some kind of technological device that they use, but actually it’s just a copy of the text that the student owns and can feel free to mark up as they see fit. My mentor says this allows students to be more engaged with the text and pick out important information rather than try to memorize it with a borrowed copy of the book. She says she wants me to start getting involved in the classroom as soon as possible, starting with little things like helping with materials and working my way up. My goal, she says, is to interact with the students as much as possible and get to know them as people, which I’m really excited to do – that’s what I’m most looking forward to for student teaching! I can’t wait to work with them next week, they sound like a good bunch.


 * Journal 2 - 10/8/13 **

For this class I came in during the period that my teacher chose for me and just sat and observed. The only reason I did this for the first class was to see how the classroom worked. It’s a co-taught class, with one teacher teaching the lesson and the other going around and helping students. I sat in the back of the classroom at one of the tables so I could oversee the classroom in action. The students are placed in groups of four at various tables in the classroom, with the whiteboard being at the front and the smartboard in the back.

The students were reading A Marriage Proposal and working in their interactive readers. I received a copy of an interactive reader so I could follow along. To review: an interactive reader is basically like a workbook with a copy of the text inside and activities that students can do accompanying it. Students can write in the book and follow along.

The teacher had them practice vocabulary words using Quizlet, an online academic site that she can enter data into so that students can practice. By playing games and various other activities, students can practice vocabulary words. Each student received a computer and practiced their vocabulary words with activities of their choosing.

Since it was a Friday, the students were very chatty and seemed eager to get out of class. There were lots of side conversations happening and the students didn’t seem very focused on the material. There was also a lot of dead time between activities where students could talk amongst themselves. The groups of students at their tables might pose a slight problem when I teach a lesson.

Can’t wait to actually be involved in the classroom this week on Friday!


 * Journal 3 - 12/12/13 **

Well, now that my lesson is done and complete, I can breathe a huge sigh of relief! It was a long experience getting here, and I'm glad things went pretty well! Originally I thought that more students would be able to present their book talks on the given date - however, Mrs. Helbig said that they needed more time, so instead we changed the lesson to me presenting an example of my book talk to the class and then walking around and helping students out with their work. This actually went very well. I made my book talk example the night before after Dr. Sherry and Mrs. Helbig suggested I make one in order to show the class what was expected of them for this project. I did just that, finding all the required components and bringing it to school with me the next day to show the students what they needed to do. I was so nervous standing up there and I discovered while watching the video that a lot of verbal tics creep into my speech when I'm nervous. The thing I didn't expect was for all the students to be attentive and listen to me closely - I thought they wouldn't care since I was a student teacher, but they allowed me to show my example and listened to my directions. When I walked around the room to help students with their projects I was pleased to see that there was such a variety with the projects. This is a genre studies class, so the students were able to pick a book that interested them from whatever genre they wanted. The kids seemed really excited about their books and I saw some wonderful artwork for the covers. I'd like to think that they had a lot of fun with the project! Unfortunately no book talks were caught on film...we ran out of time because more students said they wanted to present that I had allowed time for (so if I did this again, I would change my lesson to allow time for presentations). The one student in my class who was not allowed to be filmed presented his project, so I had to turn the camera off during his book talk. He was the only one to present that day. I was so excited to teach in a classroom with real students and happy that I was able to pull off the lesson! I would change a few things, such as allowing more time for presentations and planning ahead more to present my example (that, in my opinion, was the worst part of the lesson). But I'm glad that the students seemed to have fun with the project and I'm eternally grateful to Mrs. Helbig for allowing me to be in the classroom and have this experience. Because of this and so many other things, I feel changed. I feel like I've matured so much from September to now and I finally feel like I'm ready to be a professional next semester. It's amazing how so much can change within a semester and I'm amazed at the transformation I've gone through. It was a lot of hard work, but everything paid off in the end.



Here are some pictures of my sample book talk project:





And here's a picture of some of the book talks the students created!



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