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...