Being a short week, due to Labor Day, it went fairly quick. Teaching each day helps the days go by faster, even when I am teaching just a few periods. Teaching is going pretty good. I am starting to get more comfortable with my kids. I’ve started expanding on my lessons, too. I am not just using lecture and discussion but group work and activities. I have also used some various positive and negative reinforcements to aid in my instruction. One of the positive being where I let two friends that talk a lot sit next to each other with the consequence of moving them if they talked too much,. Needless to say, they were moved shortly after the agreement was made. I am usually an advocate of unassigned seats, but I am using them in two periods because I got so tired of talking over the class. Don’t get me wrong, I love class to be louder and interactive but there are boundaries. With being in the classroom full-time I am really starting to get a feel of what it is like to be a teacher. It is not easy, by any means, and can be very tiring.
With this week being the week prior to 9/11 we have spent a lot of time working with issues surrounding 9/11. For instance, we have been using class discussion to cover the issue around the mosque being built in NYC and the projected burning of the Qur’an in Gainesville, Fl. These issues have made it really easy to incorporate current events, along with 9/11, in our daily curriculum. With Friday, 9/10, is the day before 9/11 we devoted the whole day to discussing the terror attacks and watching a CNN documentary. I feel that this is a good way to keep these events fresh in our mind along with teaching younger students about the events, since they were very young when it happened.
Planning is going according to plan. I created a lesson plan format, with help from a Google search, which my host teacher and I agreed on for me to use. This coming week I will be covering the rest of chapter 2 for my U.S. class and some of chapter 2 with my world class. Along with these classes, I will be adding another class into the mix. One thing for sure, I have to cover the U.S. Constitution in observance of Constitution Day. As of now, I think I am going to have them complete a fun fact worksheet and either create a bumper sticker (Thanks Clay) or an amendment of their own as a class. This week I am probably going to start gathering some data for my AR. Since there will be a test, I am going to see how they do without notes. After this test, I will give an intro on note taking and start giving them guided notes. I will tier the notes until the students are taking them on their own.
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