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 next unit, which was Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. (My personal favorite!) The teacher began by defining a few vocabulary terms that applied to the play such as pastoral, soliloquy, malapropism, aside, etc. but this took less than ten minutes. She then wanted to introduce the genre of comedic theater to the kids, but rather than simply defining more terms and listing characteristics, she had the students get into groups of four and do some brainstorming of their own ideas. They had to come up with characteristics of comedy, romantic comedy, and mature love vs. immature love; the teacher encouraged students to think about the last novel they had read as well as movies and TV shows they had seen outside of school. By tapping into prior knowledge and personal experience like that, students had no trouble thinking of the kinds of comedic situations that make them laugh, which will deepen their understanding of the comedic genre as it relates to this play.

This connection to students' personal experience continued with the 7th graders, who were reading Linda Sue Park's "A Long Walk to Water." One of the characters, as the title would suggest, goes through many hardships just to get drinking water for her family; at one point, she has to dig a deep hole in a dry lakebed and wait for water to seep to the surface. The teacher paused here and asked students if any of them had ever gone to the beach, and many hands went up. She then asked them what happened when they dug a hole in the sand, and several chimed in to describe the way water starts to seep into the pit. Being able to tie the character's actions into something they have experienced made it a lot clearer to them what she was doing, as well as giving them an idea of how long it might take for someone to collect a substantial amount of water that way. And of course, when the reading is more understandable and can be related to one's own experiences, students will be more likely to engage with the text. I also spoke with the teacher during her prep period about how important she feels it is that we teach with enthusiasm, as our enthusiasm is infectious, and the reverse is true as well--if we are unenthusiastic about a text, students will pick up on that and be less inclined to care themselves.