A Long Blog to Water
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...