Field+Experience+1-8

Field Experience One:
====For my field experience, I am attending Ms. Baran’s twelfth grade English class. Specifically, this classroom is a variety of students with IEP’s that range from Learning Disabilities to Behavioral Disabilities. All in all, it is a great classroom fitting to my content and level of interest especially, regarding the inclusion of students with IEP’s. On my first visit, the class was begging their first hands on involvement with the text of William Bradford’s, “Of Plymouth Plantation”. To start off the lesson, she gave each student a guided reading packet that specifically highlighted new vocab words, rhetorical devices, passage metaphors, and also questions to guide the students through each specific passage. The class read aloud together the journey of the pilgrims to the new land. With the guided reading strategies, students had to relate the context of new vocabulary words with the text and its message to readers. Watching the students work with the text was an experience that really engaged me as a future educator. Students sat in pairs and alongside of direct instruction had time to reflect with a partner the foreshadowing of such journey to the America’s. I have realized that I will encounter a classroom full of various students and with that ensuring my lessons are not just one size fits all but flexible to all student learning methods. Ms. Baran’s exercises accommodated all types of student learning weaknesses and strengths. I have learned that making sure lessons right off that bat tailor to students needs and interest they are more likely to pick up the material and even have the desire to engage with their work as a class.====

Field Experience Two:
====For my next visit, the class was quietly working on their discussion reading packets from William Bradford’s text regarding early American Colonialism. Today, Ms. Baran introduced the different appeals she wants to the class to keep in mind when reading through Bradford’s text. With this lesson, I did notice a lot of deferment and lack of motivation. This could be that the delivery of instruction of the logical appeals was slightly mundane in that there was no guided activity to go with the mini lesson and there was not a lot of student participation. On the other hand, Ms. Baran is obviously an experienced educator because she was able to keep the students on track without using PBS. It is clear that despite her strict tendencies sometimes, the students respect her and hold her opinion highly. I can see this in non-classroom moments when students approach her in the halls and stop to talk with her. I am realizing that because of the small size of the school district it is a close-knit community where everybody knows everybody.====

Field Experience Three:
====The class has now moved on from William Bradford’s piece to Thomas Paine’s, “The Crisis”. Again, like my last visit, the students are still very rowdy and resistant to instruction and content. I noticed throughout the introductory lesson regarding the history of the time and importance of “propaganda” with Paine’s piece that some students were obviously off task and looking to their neighbors or other material to pass time. Despite their efforts to pay attention, Ms. Baran would directly call on the off-task students for participation. In moments like this, I recognized what students responded to positively and what students responded to negatively. Her decision to call on students was not beneficial to class discussion and often caused a lot of chatter time for students. During the last twenty minutes of class, Ms. Baran handed out writing prompt topics to be completed in a research essay with a partner. After class, Ms. Baran and I discussed the class and their current writing capabilities. From our talk, I have learned that this group of students has difficulty in writing and are not up to their current academic level. She conveys to me that for such twelfth grade class, only about half are going to pursue post-secondary ed. Educations. Because of this, there is a lack in motivation to write and this shows through their weaknesses when trying to find credible sources and higher level arguments and the structure that goes with such well-rounded levels of thinking.====

Field Experience Four:
====For the next Segway into the additional phases of having students working with Thomas Paine’s argument, Ms. Baran broke down the vocabulary she wanted students to play with. To be mindful, Ms. Baran has done a great job in decorating the classroom with visual aids for students such as a word wall. Here on the word wall, the students could look at the vocab used and its relation to each piece of American Literature that they worked with over the course of the marking period. Again, in pairs, the students worked together to briefly define the vocab terms. After twenty minutes, the class came back together as a whole to discuss the different findings of each terms meaning. Reading Paine’s piece together, while simultaneously discovering the specific terms meaning within the text, was a great way to expand a student’s understanding of the literature in a more concrete way versus discussing the argument’s purpose which can be more abstract. At the end of class, Ms. Baran told me that from this list of newly introduced terms, the class will have a vocab quiz to assess where students are in their understanding of Thomas Paine’s work.====

Field Experience Five:
====Out of the lessons that I have seen so far, to me, today’s lesson has been my favorite. Usually the set-up of the classroom is in pairs of two and the rows shape around the center of the room like a horseshoe. Today, the set up was different. The students were set up in traditional rows facing the smart board. Ms. Baran handed out topics and terms covered during Thomas Paine’s argument and the students had to fill out the guided notes as a whole. It reminded me of a discovery learning lesson where the students facilitated the learning and the teacher was a guide. Ms. Baran was a note taker filling in the same guided note sheet that she handed out to the class. However, this was going to be posted electronically on the class Moodle for all to see. The class went through topic to topic taking turns going up to the smart board taking notes and all Ms. Baran did was record notes on a separate sheet so that students had correct notes on the material to later refer to. But, she also was a facilitator to expand on what students were saying to bring the context cross platform in regards to Thomas Paine’s piece of literature being important among all other works of literature. It was in the students hands to build off each other’s knowledge to fill in each topic. She used this as an underlying review to see if the students were ready to conclude Thomas Paine and move onto the next piece of literature. Ms. Baran was very pleased with student participation and involvement however, she explained that in regards to Thomas Paine’s piece as a form of propaganda she recognizes a student weakness when they try to relate such genre of an argument to the audience during this time in history and its importance.====

Field Experience Six:
====Today, Ms. Baran was unfortunately not feeling well so she left early. For the class agenda, students had a free period to catch up on class work through the Moodle, senior write ups for the year book, and other odd ends that I was not familiar with. In the back of the class, there is a folder rack where students kept all of their unfinished or finished work for the class. Here, students were pulling out assignments of all sorts. This class period was a time for all behaviors both on task and off task behaviors. In case students were done, Ms. Baran left an alternate assignment in which, the students were to find a current event that they felt strongly about. Secondly, they also had to provide reasoning providing personal importance of this topic and while doing so they had to show how this event benefits society as well.====

Field Experience Seven:
====When I arrived at school, the class agenda is to wrap up Thomas Paine. Ms. Baran gave the class a study guide with specific questions directly relating to the test. She explained to me that she does not approve of review days because the students view this day as a day to goof off however, she says that her forms of review are set up so that when students receive the test they are not fooled or deceived. The study guide is a direct relation to the test in that the review asks the students to recall and recognize the major “ingredients” that make up Thomas Paine as an individual and also, his work as a motivational piece of literature. To do so, the study guide was broken down into three sections: Recognition, Inferential, and Both. Having the students backtrack and formulate their own thoughts and emotions with the text built into a great guide for them to use during the test. Ms. Baran wants to use the student’s unique thoughts to make the material more meaningful and also, to help students expand on the rhetoric’s of Paine’s argument. Again, the rhetoric’s were broken down into compartments across the classroom word wall.====

Field Experience Eight:
====The students were given the chapter test on Thomas Paine and his piece, “The Crisis”. The entire period was used to administer the test even though the majority of the class finished in the first twenty five minutes of class. The test structure was a mixture between passage analysis where students explained specific aphorisms examined in class and also a short essay. The short essay regarded the universal meanings of Paine’s aphorisms relating to direct citations of the text, the author’s emotions, the public’s emotions and various other effects contained in historical events relating to the text. For the other students who did not complete the test as fast as the other’s showed a lot struggle with their explanations in Paine’s aphorisms. Ms. Baran went around the room student by student restating the question or relating it to a real life student situation. I noticed when Ms. Baran related a student’s interest back into a difficult question, students understood the explanation so much faster than if she were to densely restate the already imposing question.====

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