Jacqueline Marien's Blog – October 2007 Archive (11)

Today I have so much work to get done so I will just give a list of things that I did today:

• Shadowed a female student and was very impressed with the classes she was taking. It ranged from jewerely design to treble choir to precalculus to advanced painting and drawing. I have seen two different math teachers and two different economic teachers. It is interesting to see the variety of teaching skills among the teachers
• I sat in and observed the second day of the…

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My day is spent still observing my c.t. and getting used to the building. There was a new set of students in the AIS class today, due to the A/B day schedule. I think it is there I might build a closer connection with students because the work is one on one. There is no lesson planning for AIS because it is the Learning Center as well. The students come in to work on essays or work for other classes. The drama class is watching Taming of the Shrew and we are finishing the movie as well as… Continue

I do not know if I have the words to describe my experience today on my first day at HH high school. I do know that I did not come home with a splitting headache, a dry mouth, or agida because the children were so incredibly different than the middle school students. I feel like I have entered teh twilight zone and I am in the perfect school. The students do not fight in the hallways, they do not talk back to the teachers, they are actually smiling, and they acknowledge your presence. Now I… Continue

So the very last day of student teaching in the middle school was a little more than what I expected it to be. But before I start I just have to say that the night before I made cake and cookies for the staff and students in my classes. The staff was more than appreciative but the students' thank yous only came from a slight few. I spent the day giving out survey's that would help me as I move on to my next placement. Some of the students were serious about my lessons and teaching style. One… Continue

The past two days have been spent on these specific benchmark assessments the 8th graders must complete by the end of the year. Yesterday I showed them the assignment and we created an outline for it as well as an introduction. I ended up writing the introduction and the students just copied it. I was not teaching them how to write effectively, only how to copy well =/ In any case I explained to the students what their task was and that they could use thier notes for the essay. It was hard…

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So, it has been while since I have written only because I have been so busy with completing things for my last week at my first placement. In any case last Friday went extremely well. I gave the students their vocabulary quiz and started them on finishing their mobiles. There was a twist in the day when I came back role palying one of the characters in the story we had been reading. One of the assignments that the students had to do was come up…

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It was a long but successful day. Each class had a pop quiz and I think everyone seemed to do well. We completed a venn diagram that compared two chracters from two different texts. The class was put into groups to establish appropriate questions to ask Laurie's mom. I put them into groups and some students were not happy. There were groups that worked better than others and some students rolled their eyes or gasped when they found out who was in their group. I explained that this was only… Continue

Today was my first observation from my supervisor. While it went very well and I have positive feelings about I can say that the night before I could not get to sleep and my mind was in all different kinds of directions. However, once she got there my nerves were at ease as we spoke before class as well as after class. She sat at my cooperating teacher's desk and I felt so comfortable that I had forgotten she was even there. Prior to my supervisor coming I had told my C.T. to jump in as I… Continue

Today started as if there was really school on Monday. We dove right into the unit for the day. There were new vocabulary words on the board, (due to the copier being broken I had to improvise and go "old school"). Once we reviewed the vocabulary, I handed out the story for the day "Charles" by Shirley Jackson. As we read through there were a couple of questions to ask and things to correct such as the word "rubbers" which students mistook for protection when in reality the author was…

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Friday, good old Fridays. I was more than happy to see the weekend come. It was defintily a stressful week as per the class had been reviewing how to write an effective introductary paragraph, reviewing grammar, and going over the assessment test that the students must complete in their 8th grade year. Friday consisted of taking two exams, one vocabulary test and the assessment itself. This assessment task asked for students to read "Paul…

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So today, I was back to school after recovering from an awful tonsil infection that left me literally speechless. I had gone to bed late the night before and I have no idea where the energy came to get up this morning and continue vigorously throughout the whole day. I checked in with my cooperating teacher and she gave me a run down of what had happend on Friday. There a few house things to deal with such as finishing up handouts and such. I was able to jump right in with my new unit on… Continue