Field Experience

While I have not gotten to observe students actually writing in class, I have seen the before and after, the pre-writing and the presentation of the final product. Just yesterday, the eighth grade honors class I sat in on were preparing to write their final essay on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The teacher gave them a choice between two essay prompts, with the second one being slightly more challenging than the first; most students chose the first one, but it was nice that they had the autonomy to choose. After giving out the prompt assignment sheets, the teacher thoroughly went over each one, explaining what it means and what it is asking for (but first asking students to define it instead of just telling them herself) as well as going over all the components of the essay, breaking it down paragraph by paragraph.   On the back of the prompt sheet was a planning page, where the required components were broken down for them to fill in: ie. “Rephrase the prompt in your own words,”...

While I have not actually observed ENL classes being taught yet, I have subbed for ENL teachers on a fair number of occasions, and I'm able to glean a little bit from these experiences, as well as from seeing these ELL students and their teachers around the school environment. My school district is ethnically diverse and has a fairly high population of ELLs, primarily with Spanish as their first language, and uses a Dual Language program (which, I believe, is much better for these kids than English immersion or other ENL programs which are subtractive rather than additive). Instruction is often done in their home language, and they have a class period especially dedicated to "home language arts," where they study texts and learn literacy skills in Spanish so they can better apply those skills to English when they are ready. This is something I'm really glad to see, and often times the work I give out to students when subbing involves answering questions and/or filling...

Most of the technology usage I have seen so far in the classroom has been pretty minimal, barely extending past basic SmartBoard functions that could just as easily be accomplished with a projector and/or a regular chalkboard. I have seen SmartBoards used twice now for note-taking, with the teacher occasionally underlining or annotating what is already written to help in their explanation of the concept. Recently I watched one teacher explain what they would be working on in the upcoming weeks, and there were a lot of questions and confusion. So for the next section she had of that class, she used the SmartBoard to draw and label a calendar for them, and having the visual component up made it a lot clearer for this group.  The most creative use of the SmartBoard I've seen yet was in a 7th grade inclusion classroom. For one part of the lesson, there was a series of pictures up on the board which were covered with a grid of colorful squares. When each square was tapped it would di...

Today I finally began my actual observation! I sat in on five classes at my local middle school, three of which were 8th grade honors and the other two 7th grade inclusion. For all of these classes, the instructional objective (I.O.) was up on the board, and I (as well as the students) could see that there was a standards-based goal that they were working towards. The eighth graders were just finishing up a unit on poetry, where their final project provided them a choice: they could either write a poem of their own, memorize and recite a poem for the class, or write a short analytical paper on a poem of their choice. I really liked the fact that students could pick one of these three options, and I think they did too. Some of them surprised themselves by creating great poems, while others faced their fears to recite a poem to the class; still others preferred to hand in a written analysis. After a few readings and the handing in of these assignments, they began to transition into the n...

While I've still been having some difficulties in getting my actual observation started, I did have another opportunity last week to sub in an English Inclusion classroom where I could watch the lesson that the other teacher had prepared. I spent 6th and 7th period with her and her classes, both 9th grade regents level. Both classes worked on the same thing, with no variation between the two. The groups were reading Romeo and Juliet, picking up from where they left off the day before with Act 1 Scene 2. And if you asked me to predict, according to the concept of Backwards Design, what the teacher had in mind as the mastery goals for students, I would say she didn't have any in mind. But if I had to come up with one, it seemed the goal was for students to walk out with a basic understanding of the events that take place in scenes 1 and 2, and little else beyond that. The way she achieved this goal was by reading scene 2 aloud from where they had left off, then evaluating stude...

I have not yet begun official field experience in the 7-12 English setting, but as a per-diem substitute teacher I've been in plenty of English classrooms lately. This occasionally includes Inclusion classrooms in which I'm covering for the teacher who is out while the other is still there to run the lesson...so, basically, I get a period of unofficial observation. One such classroom experience was last semester, so I can't recall the exact grade level--perhaps eleventh grade? I happened to be there on the day that the class was beginning The Catcher in the Rye. As I read chapter 5 of Christenbury and Lindblom's Making the Journey , I realized that I could look back and see the lenses that this teacher was using on that day as they began to dive into this book. She did not begin by giving them any sort of historical context, nor did she say a word about J. D. Salinger. After briefly asking students whether they had any idea what the book was about or what the title co...