Week 11

Today in class we made booklets for the students so that they could take down observations when they watch a movie later on this week about characterization. The students will be watching Scooby Doo and writing about each of the individual characters, their traits, and whether or not they think that character will solve the mystery based off of these traits. The teacher called it "sneaky learning" because the students would think that they were having a movie break before Thanksgiving, but really they're learning about literature. Later on during class, we worked with our kidwatching kid and helped them to catch up on work that they had not yet completed. They were learning about Native Americans and the different vocabulary words, and also recalling facts about what they had read. I noticed today that my kidwatching kid, although being a very competent reader, actually has a lot of difficulties recalling exact details and would often have to refer back to the texts to answer her questions. She also had to write a reflection about she thought about a sentence that the teacher had posted on the board. I wasn't sure if she couldn't read her own writing, but she had extreme difficulties reading her paragraph aloud to me when I know she is a strong reader. I guess I was just confused about what she was struggling with today, hopefully it was just sloppy handwriting.

Week 10

Unfortunately, I missed this week because I was sick, but interestingly enough, I ran into a student this previous weekend who seemed extremely excited to see me. He wondered where I had been, and when I explained that I wasn't feeling very well he was satisfied and then said he would see me next week! I was tickled because I felt somewhat like a real teacher for a moment. It always interests me to see how students are going to react to seeing a teacher outside of the classroom. Sometimes students are intimidated by seeing their teacher, but the fact that this student approached me like an old friend made me feel important and made me feel like I was missed. I can't wait for the student to approach me in the mall/grocery/wherever to be one of MY students.

Week 9

Today at field experience, our teacher was absent. So, because of this absence she left us an activity to prepare for the kids to do when they came back from specials. Basically what we had to do was cut out little cards from a sheet of paper and break the students up into groups of two. The cards each had clues using the definition and root of the word so that they would lead to the next card. One student would have the first card, the second student would have the other and it would go back and forth until the students ran out of cards. We were supposed to explain the activity to the class and then go around and answer questions, however the activity was a disaster. None of the students understood what they were supposed to be doing, and the cards were really mixed up. So, the other IU teachers and I decided that we were going to go through the cards as a class, and I thought the activity was much more fun. The first student read the first card, and if the students knew the answer they would raise their hand. If I called on them and they knew the answer, they would get to read their clue, and if they got it wrong, they would have to look through their cards and try again. I think when the class was thinking together like that, the energy was much better, and the activity was somewhat redeeming because the first attempt was such a disaster. I understand that sometimes lessons don't go exactly as planned, but the frustrating part was that we weren't the ones that came up with the lesson and neither the students nor the teacher knew how to participate. It was rough!