All of the 8th grade teachers were participating in training today, so my CT had a substitute teacher in his classroom, but invited me to attend. I took the opportunity to take a lead on the class. Although the students were just finishing up their poetry projects, I felt like I was the leader in the room and in charge of the class periods that I was in.
My CT left an excellent video tutorial, which served as a reminder of how to work the computer program that the students were using, and how to correctly save it as a different file. He also left a one page reflection assignment that the students would have to finish in class.
It went very well, considering that it was Friday and many of the students were nearly finished, meaning they had a lot of free time during the class. Because this was two days after the tragedy that was mentioned in my last entry, I allowed students to have a little freedom, as long as it was organized. I made a deal with the students; if they kept the noise level to a minimum, they would be allow to talk with each other and look at each others' poems on the server. They agreed with me and it worked pretty well. I was surprised by how well two of the three periods that I attend cooperated with me.
The students were more open to share their work with me. The student who I mentioned last class who raps, rapped something for me and I could not help, but smile because this student appeared to be back to his old self, as many of the students were.
I noticed many of them smile and laugh, which did not happen at all during my last visit. Each class was somber, especially the second period class, which was when the news was very fresh in the students' minds. I was glad to see that things were much cheerier than my last visit.
My CT left an excellent video tutorial, which served as a reminder of how to work the computer program that the students were using, and how to correctly save it as a different file. He also left a one page reflection assignment that the students would have to finish in class.
It went very well, considering that it was Friday and many of the students were nearly finished, meaning they had a lot of free time during the class. Because this was two days after the tragedy that was mentioned in my last entry, I allowed students to have a little freedom, as long as it was organized. I made a deal with the students; if they kept the noise level to a minimum, they would be allow to talk with each other and look at each others' poems on the server. They agreed with me and it worked pretty well. I was surprised by how well two of the three periods that I attend cooperated with me.
The students were more open to share their work with me. The student who I mentioned last class who raps, rapped something for me and I could not help, but smile because this student appeared to be back to his old self, as many of the students were.
I noticed many of them smile and laugh, which did not happen at all during my last visit. Each class was somber, especially the second period class, which was when the news was very fresh in the students' minds. I was glad to see that things were much cheerier than my last visit.
