WagnerLIFE1

Dear colleagues, I have met with my teacher, Ms. Smith at PA Middle School a few times now, and I feel that this is already a very beneficial experience. She was very welcoming and introduced me to her class of sixth graders on the first day. She has a very positive attitude, and her classroom is decorated with many different bright educational posters. She has the desks of her class put into pairs, because she is an advocate of group work and collaboration. She also seems fair and nice at accommodating students who like to take notes and write things down; she provided all students with paper copies of her textbook to encourage close reading, note-taking, and highlighting. I personally like to read and study with this method, and it was a nice change of pace from most middle and high school classes of mine where highlighting and annotating texts was discouraged.
 * Field Experience Journal 1**

The curriculum is set up with a textbook that teaches a reading strategy (the first week was monitoring) in conjunction with a text (the first week, they read a story called “The School Play”). This short story dealt with a student who had to face their fear, and Ms. Smith gave the students a fear inventory. This lead to a very animated class discussion. The second half of their class was devoted to reading, in pairs, the story. I am present, due to my schedule, only for the first 55 minutes of class. The students then go to a different class for their second period before returning to English class for their third period. I personally never saw or heard about this sort of schedule; I never even have been to a middle school before!

Overall, Ms.Smith was very welcoming and polite. I’ve yet to learn a lot about my students, but I hopefully will be mingling with them more often within the coming weeks.

See you around, Jamie