Pre-Student Teaching (EDUC 362: Teaching Experience I) serves as the initial field experience for prospective student teachers and is completed the semester prior to student teaching.
I've just completed my first full week of teaching full-time! Mr. Polk was out of town this week, so I was a bit nervous about how the students would receive me as their full-time teacher, but things went really well! (Of course, there is always one student who has to make negative comments about everything, but 1 out of 131 is manageable!) I tried to do different lesson plans/activities each day to just experiment with how students would respond to and learn from each teaching style. Here is a summary:
Monday's topic was U.S. Japanese-American internment. I did a PP presentation interspersed with audio clips of interviews of people who experienced internment. I then showed a short documentary about a specific internment camp before giving them their homework, which was to write a letter to the U.S. government from the perspective of a Japanese American at the time stating reasons why internment was unjust and unconstitutional.
Tuesday I expanded on arguments against the constitutionality of internment. Students volunteered to share their homework, and then I asked students to get into pairs to work on 2 U.S. Supreme Court cases from 1944 challenging internment. Half the class had one case, and the other half had a different case, so I then used sticks to randomly select teams to report on each question about their case. I then showed a documentary clip about racial profiling of Muslim-Americans after 9/11 to connect wartime racial discrimination/deprivation of rights to a contemporary example.
Wednesday transitioned to the Holocaust. I did a PP presentation about eugenics in the U.S. and its influence on Nazi sterilization programs and euthanasia of "undesirables." I also discussed the long history of anti-Semitism in Europe. I utilized technology with clickers with which students could "vote" on which right (life, liberty, property) was violated with each action taken against Jews from 1933-1942.
Thursday was a full class simulation of the Evian Conference. The desks were arranged in two concentric circles and labeled with the 32 countries represented at the conference. When students entered class on Thursday, I gave each one a card with a different country's immigration policy written on it so that they would sit in that country's seat and be that delegate. I read a 1-page description of the background of the conference aloud while they followed along. On a chart, students listed the country, how many Jewish refugees that country could accept, and how many of the 758,000 Jews still needed to be placed after subtracting each country's allowance. It ended up being a great exercise in history, geography (some didn't even know "what" Uruguay was!), spelling, and math!!
Friday was a more serious lecture, as the topic was the liberation of concentration camps by U.S. soldiers. I told the students that there would be no talking in class. I had them close their eyes as I described the experience of a U.S. soldier who had fought in D-Day and then fought across France to get to Germany, there discovering a concentration camp. When they opened their eyes, they saw two pictures on the projector of emaciated Holocaust victims. I asked them to write their immediate response. I briefly told them about the camps that were liberated by the U.S. before showing them about 15 minutes of silent liberation footage. The students were good about watching silently! They had the rest of the hour to either write a letter home or diary entry from a soldier's perspective describing the experience of liberation.
Overall, the week went really well. The students were receptive. I struggle with coming to terms with the limited knowledge some students have at this level. The writing skills of even some of the top students are appalling, and their lack of knowledge of history and geography is shocking at times. I'm not sure where along the educational assembly line teachers stop correcting mistakes, but it is clear that some students have no idea that what they are writing is incorrect.
I spent a lot of time with Ervin’s class this week as I tried to get to know the material and students better. I had the opportunity to do two more lessons with the academic lab class this week. During these lessons I learned more about the limitations of computers in the classroom, especially when I’m the only person without one. Because I don’t share a knowledge of what is and isn’t accessible by student laptops I’ve had to limit the use of the internet in my lessons and plan more. These have been great things for me to practice. I also appreciate how good it will be in the future to be with a group of students for a year and become familiar with where each student is and where they should be. Lately, I’ve been asking myself the same questions repeatedly: Do they know this? Have they done this? Is this too easy? Too hard? The patient understanding of my cooperating teacher has helped me work through these questions. He has given me a student workbook as a reference to the completed work of the class and always reassures me that any and all work that his academic lab class does is at the very least good practice.
I will never again overlook the importance of knowing student’s names. Part of the reason for the grinding silence of my first lesson was a combination of shyness of the students and the fact that I couldn’t call on even one person by name to help me work through a problem.
I am starting my ten consecutive lessons on Monday and for some reason I am excited, and not at all terrified.
On the fourteenth I journeyed back to Mrs. Benally’s kindergarten and once again helped with the day’s activities. Students were split into three groups; an individual group that listened to a recorded book, a group that work with Kathleen and a group that created site word flowers. I worked with the flower children, helping them understand the instructions of the assignment and working with them on site word recognition. At this point I’d like to write a note to the future Ms. Litke- buy a vaccume for the classroom!
While the class as a whole listened to a second story Kathleen and I looked over my lesson plans and agreed on the days I’ll be teaching. Do to my upcoming procedure my days of teaching are going to split into sets, starting this week. April 19th through the 21st I will be working with the kids as we create more structured poetry. April 27th through the 30th we will dip into the world of “messy” poetry that utilizes the children’s creativity and imagination. My third set, May 3rd through the 7th will be a combination of structure and creativity with the end result of a polished I Am poem.
I've just completed my first full week of teaching full-time! Mr. Polk was out of town this week, so I was a bit nervous about how the students would receive me as their full-time teacher, but things went really well! (Of course, there is always one student who has to make negative comments about everything, but 1 out of 131 is manageable!) I tried to do different lesson plans/activities each day to just experiment with how students would respond to and learn from each teaching style. Here is a summary:
ReplyDeleteMonday's topic was U.S. Japanese-American internment. I did a PP presentation interspersed with audio clips of interviews of people who experienced internment. I then showed a short documentary about a specific internment camp before giving them their homework, which was to write a letter to the U.S. government from the perspective of a Japanese American at the time stating reasons why internment was unjust and unconstitutional.
Tuesday I expanded on arguments against the constitutionality of internment. Students volunteered to share their homework, and then I asked students to get into pairs to work on 2 U.S. Supreme Court cases from 1944 challenging internment. Half the class had one case, and the other half had a different case, so I then used sticks to randomly select teams to report on each question about their case. I then showed a documentary clip about racial profiling of Muslim-Americans after 9/11 to connect wartime racial discrimination/deprivation of rights to a contemporary example.
Wednesday transitioned to the Holocaust. I did a PP presentation about eugenics in the U.S. and its influence on Nazi sterilization programs and euthanasia of "undesirables." I also discussed the long history of anti-Semitism in Europe. I utilized technology with clickers with which students could "vote" on which right (life, liberty, property) was violated with each action taken against Jews from 1933-1942.
Thursday was a full class simulation of the Evian Conference. The desks were arranged in two concentric circles and labeled with the 32 countries represented at the conference. When students entered class on Thursday, I gave each one a card with a different country's immigration policy written on it so that they would sit in that country's seat and be that delegate. I read a 1-page description of the background of the conference aloud while they followed along. On a chart, students listed the country, how many Jewish refugees that country could accept, and how many of the 758,000 Jews still needed to be placed after subtracting each country's allowance. It ended up being a great exercise in history, geography (some didn't even know "what" Uruguay was!), spelling, and math!!
ReplyDeleteFriday was a more serious lecture, as the topic was the liberation of concentration camps by U.S. soldiers. I told the students that there would be no talking in class. I had them close their eyes as I described the experience of a U.S. soldier who had fought in D-Day and then fought across France to get to Germany, there discovering a concentration camp. When they opened their eyes, they saw two pictures on the projector of emaciated Holocaust victims. I asked them to write their immediate response. I briefly told them about the camps that were liberated by the U.S. before showing them about 15 minutes of silent liberation footage. The students were good about watching silently! They had the rest of the hour to either write a letter home or diary entry from a soldier's perspective describing the experience of liberation.
Overall, the week went really well. The students were receptive. I struggle with coming to terms with the limited knowledge some students have at this level. The writing skills of even some of the top students are appalling, and their lack of knowledge of history and geography is shocking at times. I'm not sure where along the educational assembly line teachers stop correcting mistakes, but it is clear that some students have no idea that what they are writing is incorrect.
I spent a lot of time with Ervin’s class this week as I tried to get to know the material and students better. I had the opportunity to do two more lessons with the academic lab class this week. During these lessons I learned more about the limitations of computers in the classroom, especially when I’m the only person without one. Because I don’t share a knowledge of what is and isn’t accessible by student laptops I’ve had to limit the use of the internet in my lessons and plan more. These have been great things for me to practice. I also appreciate how good it will be in the future to be with a group of students for a year and become familiar with where each student is and where they should be. Lately, I’ve been asking myself the same questions repeatedly: Do they know this? Have they done this? Is this too easy? Too hard? The patient understanding of my cooperating teacher has helped me work through these questions. He has given me a student workbook as a reference to the completed work of the class and always reassures me that any and all work that his academic lab class does is at the very least good practice.
ReplyDeleteI will never again overlook the importance of knowing student’s names. Part of the reason for the grinding silence of my first lesson was a combination of shyness of the students and the fact that I couldn’t call on even one person by name to help me work through a problem.
I am starting my ten consecutive lessons on Monday and for some reason I am excited, and not at all terrified.
On the fourteenth I journeyed back to Mrs. Benally’s kindergarten and once again helped with the day’s activities. Students were split into three groups; an individual group that listened to a recorded book, a group that work with Kathleen and a group that created site word flowers. I worked with the flower children, helping them understand the instructions of the assignment and working with them on site word recognition. At this point I’d like to write a note to the future Ms. Litke- buy a vaccume for the classroom!
ReplyDeleteWhile the class as a whole listened to a second story Kathleen and I looked over my lesson plans and agreed on the days I’ll be teaching. Do to my upcoming procedure my days of teaching are going to split into sets, starting this week. April 19th through the 21st I will be working with the kids as we create more structured poetry. April 27th through the 30th we will dip into the world of “messy” poetry that utilizes the children’s creativity and imagination. My third set, May 3rd through the 7th will be a combination of structure and creativity with the end result of a polished I Am poem.
Let the games begin!