Reflective Journal Entry
October 02, 2012
After introducing ourselves to the office secretaries and signing in, Jimmy and I made our way to Mrs. Dac's room for her 12 student honors American literature class. The class was beginning an in-class reading of Of Mice and Men. Mr.L, the student teacher, played a short clip of the film adaptation as a motivational devise before handing out a list of vocabulary and allusions found in the text. Using props, the students then took turns reading the narrator part from the stools up front before passing the hat off to a different student; the teachers read the character parts. However, Mrs. Dac prefaced the reading by explaining that they would encounter profanity that was used in typical language at the time the book was published, offering any students who felt uncomfortable an alternative assignment and reminding all of her students that "the n-word" was not to be read out loud. At the conclusion of the class, Mrs. Dac praised the students for their reading but neither her nor Mr. L gave homework or closure to the lesson.Mrs. Dac requires her honors students to carry folders and have binders as well as to pick up papers and turn in homework at the start of class. She does not remind the students and keeps an attendance/homework checklist for each day as proof during parent teacher conferences. I feel I have a lot to learn from Mrs. Dac about organization and I think it's important that she holds her students accountable. However, by tenth grade, students have their own organization system so I do not feel teachers should require a certain type of folder/binder organization, especially not in an honors course. I also observed both Mr. L and Mrs. Dac moving around the room. All students were on task close to 100% of the time during the reading because they never knew when they would have to read aloud. The honors class was tuned in and ready to and the teachers had a strong rhythm going on.
The massive general class that arrived was a different story. The students required beginning of class reminders about upcoming due dates and there were so many questions that Mr.L made them take out and circle items on a pre-made calendar that he had supplied them earlier in the semester. The class mainly consisted of students filling out a worksheet. Mrs. Dac informed me that very few of the 30 or so students complete homework so they have to do in class written work in order to assess students knowledge. Mr. L did allow students to work in pairs and, at the end of class, to write their responses on the smart board, a great use of technology for kinesthetic learners. Also, he and Mrs. Dac were moving around the room assisting students and offering encouragement. The issue with the student makeup of this class is the wide variety of levels; there are some students who should be in honors English and some students at a 3rd grade reading level. Mr. L handled this by assigning students who finished early to work on their individual books while assigning the worksheet as homework to students who needed to finish. It just seems like a waste of class time to complete what is essentially homework. The teachers make some comments to build rapport at the start of class and it's evident that they have the student's respect. The teachers also ignored minor misbehavior but reminded the students of the rule when the behavior began to escalate. Overall, there are a lot of good things going on in the class.
After introducing ourselves to the office secretaries and signing in, Jimmy and I made our way to Mrs. Dac's room for her 12 student honors American literature class. The class was beginning an in-class reading of Of Mice and Men. Mr.L, the student teacher, played a short clip of the film adaptation as a motivational devise before handing out a list of vocabulary and allusions found in the text. Using props, the students then took turns reading the narrator part from the stools up front before passing the hat off to a different student; the teachers read the character parts. However, Mrs. Dac prefaced the reading by explaining that they would encounter profanity that was used in typical language at the time the book was published, offering any students who felt uncomfortable an alternative assignment and reminding all of her students that "the n-word" was not to be read out loud. At the conclusion of the class, Mrs. Dac praised the students for their reading but neither her nor Mr. L gave homework or closure to the lesson.Mrs. Dac requires her honors students to carry folders and have binders as well as to pick up papers and turn in homework at the start of class. She does not remind the students and keeps an attendance/homework checklist for each day as proof during parent teacher conferences. I feel I have a lot to learn from Mrs. Dac about organization and I think it's important that she holds her students accountable. However, by tenth grade, students have their own organization system so I do not feel teachers should require a certain type of folder/binder organization, especially not in an honors course. I also observed both Mr. L and Mrs. Dac moving around the room. All students were on task close to 100% of the time during the reading because they never knew when they would have to read aloud. The honors class was tuned in and ready to and the teachers had a strong rhythm going on.
The massive general class that arrived was a different story. The students required beginning of class reminders about upcoming due dates and there were so many questions that Mr.L made them take out and circle items on a pre-made calendar that he had supplied them earlier in the semester. The class mainly consisted of students filling out a worksheet. Mrs. Dac informed me that very few of the 30 or so students complete homework so they have to do in class written work in order to assess students knowledge. Mr. L did allow students to work in pairs and, at the end of class, to write their responses on the smart board, a great use of technology for kinesthetic learners. Also, he and Mrs. Dac were moving around the room assisting students and offering encouragement. The issue with the student makeup of this class is the wide variety of levels; there are some students who should be in honors English and some students at a 3rd grade reading level. Mr. L handled this by assigning students who finished early to work on their individual books while assigning the worksheet as homework to students who needed to finish. It just seems like a waste of class time to complete what is essentially homework. The teachers make some comments to build rapport at the start of class and it's evident that they have the student's respect. The teachers also ignored minor misbehavior but reminded the students of the rule when the behavior began to escalate. Overall, there are a lot of good things going on in the class.