Coleman+Field+Experience+Journals

Field Experience Journal 1

I am observing an AP Language and Composition class of 16 students, with 13 juniors and 3 sophomores. The teacher I am working with started the class by introducing me and then having all of the students introduce themselves to me. Then he directed his class's attention to a white board at the front of the class where he had written down the focus areas of the day. This is a picture of that white board:

The class is currently reading //The Crucible// by Arthur Miller. Mr. C explained to me that he assigned the students to read Miller's essay "Tragedy and the Common Man," so they could get insight into Miller's opinions on topics such as: tragedy, a tragic hero, tragic laws, pathos, etc. before reading his play. He also gave them questions that they had to answer from their reading. Mr. C gave the students 15 minutes at the beginning of class to take a Mac from the computer cart to finish the assignment. This is a copy of the reading questions:

I noticed that some of the students started to get a bit unfocused during the 15 minutes they were given to finish up the assignment. Mr. C noticed as well and clapped his hands together and announced to the students that they needed to focus on finishing up the questions so they could move on. This classroom management strategy worked well for his students. When students had questions, he went over to them and knelt down beside them so it wasn't distracting to the rest of the students. He also made sure the announce to the students that they only had 5 minutes left so they could start to close off their writing.

When the students hand in their assignment, Mr. C tells his students to get out their vocabulary sentence worksheets so they could go over them. In the previous class, he provided them with 10 sentences using "a" words that they may not know. They were told to look the words up and to come up with some synonyms for homework. After reading a sentence off the list aloud, Mr. C asked his students to give him some synonyms for the vocabulary word. He then told them to write down a specific synonym of his choice for the students to know for their vocabulary test. On the bottom of the vocabulary sheet, he had an "enrichment" section. This section included words such as "adverse vs. averse" "advice vs. advise" and "affect vs. effect." He had the students give the parts of speech of each word and then explained how they differed from each other. This is a copy of the vocabulary sheet:



The class was a double-period and I could only stay for the first part so I didn't get to see the closure of the class. Right before the end of the first half of class, Mr. C had the students take out //The Crucible// and then had them choose parts to read, while one student copied down who was reading which parts.

I think the Mr. C's students are very comfortable with him and in his class. They were able to joke easily during the class and still accomplished a lot. He didn't have a hard time keeping them on track with the lesson. I am looking forward to observing more classes and getting to know the students better as well.


 * Field Experience Journal 2**

At my last observation, the students had finished //The Crucible// so Mr. C had them do what is called a "Socratic Seminar." He gave all of the students the same two questions to prepare answer for the Seminar. When they came in on Friday, they picked either a 1 or a 2 out of a hat. The 1 group was the inner circle and the 2 group was the outer circle. The inner circle discussed the first question on the list for about 25 minutes. Everyone spoke up whenever they had something to discuss and responded to each other's comments. After the first group finished discussing their question, Mr. C opened up the conversation to the kids in the outer circle who were taking notes on the 1st group's discussion. I was really excited by the great reaction he got when he had the outer circle give their opinions on the first question. Everyone was very eager to share their opinions. After a 5 minute break, Mr. C had the inner and outer circle groups switch places. The second group was very interested in speaking their minds about the 2nd question. I was really happy to see that almost all of the students were very excited about participating in the Socratic Seminar. When they finished discussing their ideas, Mr. C had them talk about what they thought about the Seminar. The students responded really positively to it. One thing I did notice was that sometimes they had a hard time discussing rather than debating. They had debates in class before but this was their first Socratic Seminar. I think sometimes they fell back into the routine of debating. This picture is of the Socratic Seminar Questions and the Ground Rules for Participants

These are the goals for the seminar.


 * Field Experience: Journal 3**

At the start of this double-period lesson, Mr. C collect the papers I needed for the SWAP project. From there he moved on to doing a vocabulary review for their "Trifecta" vocab quiz. As implied by the name, this upcoming quiz is on the last three sets of vocabulary terms they were given. Once they finished the vocab review, Mr. C told them to take out their rhetoric worksheets from the previous lesson. They briefly reviewed Aristotle's logical appeals (logos, ethos, and pathos), and then Mr. C introduced the day's activity. He told them that they were going to interpret a song that he will play for them using the 3 appeals. The song he chose for them to listen to was "It's My Life," by Bon Jovi. He then gave them an informal writing task, where they had to focus on the 3 appeals, contemporary relevance and personal application. Mr. C handed out the lyrics to the song so they could follow along and refer back to them. He also gave them a paper with a bit of background information on the song. Before he played the song, he had them count off from 1-4, and then had them switch tables to sit with the people with the same number as them. When he played the song, most of the students seemed to recognize it. After hearing the line, "It's now or never, I ain't gonna live forever" he repeated that line to his peers and said, "hey that's like YOLO, right?" When they finished listening to the song, he gave them 20 minutes to start writing their informal reflection. At the end of the 20 minutes, he gave them a 5 minute break to stretch their legs, before starting the second half of the double period. When they all came back, Mr. C had them do what he called a "Read-Around." This is when they all trade papers with the other members of their group. He instructed the students to evaluate whether or not their peers addressed the 3 tasks and to write a comment about both their overall work, and their initial response to their peer's work. A few minutes into the Read-Around, the students started to get chatty and a bit off task, so Mr. C checked in on their progress and quieted them down. When they all finished, the class had an open discussion about where they found the 3 appeals and contemporary relevance in the song. That brought them up the the end of the class, when Mr. C reminded them about their upcoming vocabulary quiz.