Friday, November 16, 2007

A Sad Time....


It is so sad that today was our last day in the field! Now we have to start making sure all the papers and stuff get written. Monday we took our students to work on the stories in the computer lab....that was an experience. They went in today to finish them and most of them were deleted by someone else. So some of them started over. There were only three students who finished, but we knew that was going to happen. Yesterday we went and sat through SEPs for the whole time. While we were listening we were working on some more things for the gifted exam thing they did earlier this year.

Oh! I almost forgot! Tuesday we got to go see the play "Bye, Bye Birdie" at Timpview HIgh (it is right next store.) The students did well, but at the end they started to get restless. And of course they were all grossed out and covered their eyes when the boy kissed the girl. It was fun.

I hope everyone else enjoyed their field experience!!!! See you on Monday!

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Observations..

Well our week of teaching went well. We were not able to finish everything in the amount of time allotted to us each day, so the teacher had the students finish some of their assignments during times when we weren't there. It is okay though, the students learned what they needed to learn. We know this because they were able to recall the information that we stressed plus some that we mentioned in passing!!!

We were observed our last two days of teaching. We had not had any real problems with the students misbehaving until Thursday (the first day we were observed!). What happened is every day we taught in the morning except for the Thursday and Friday, because our Intern Coach could not come to observe us earlier in the day. We were scheduled to teach at 1:30. Thursday morning Laura got a message saying we needed to teach at 1:00. This posed a problem because we could not be observed until 1:30. We decided to stretch out the beginning of our lesson so that she would see both of us teaching. However, about 15 or 20 minutes into this, the students got bored with the activity but the intern coach was not there yet, so we had to stretch it just a little longer before we started the next part. We were ending our lesson with sand art which would have been fine if we had not had to drag out the first part of the lesson. The students were not able to finish the sand art (most barely got started) before they had to go to a presentation and then recess. We learned much from this experience.

Friday went better because we knew ahead of time that we would be teaching for half an hour before we were getting observed, also, we had ways of keeping the children from getting bored or out of control. We are going to do a little more on our lesson on Monday. The students are really into the writing we are having them do right now (even some of the ones who normally would not be).

It is nice to be in the field and I am learning a lot. Now all I have to do is get all the papers written that are due when we get back.....

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

How The Cactus Got Its Spines


The week has gone well so far. We did our cooperating group lesson plan today, but we had to leave some parts out. The students really enjoyed it though and participated in all the activities without any major problems. We are nervous because tomorrow and Friday we are being observed. Hopefully those lessons will go well!

If you look towards the bottom of my page, I have posted my digital story! It isn't as clear since I had to convert it to Quick Time. It looks much better in the iMovie form. You do what you can do!

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Lessons....

Hello!! We have now taught two lessons! I taught yesterdays and it went well. We had a substitute teacher in the class. The students would behave for us but not as well for the sub. I am impressed by how much the students knew and participated in the discussion. Today Laura taught and the students really got into the activity. They are able to recall a lot of information.

We have already changed almost every lesson we have written. The students were supposed to have already learned about the other native american tribes but have not yet learned about most of them. Also, the make up of the students has had us change some of the things to better accomadate for them.

We have three more lessons to go!!! Hopefully everyone is having a good time in their classes as well!!