Teach Week Countdown

       As teach week approaches I wonder what mistakes from Burrilville I can improve on in regards to both planning and delivering lesson plans. Mainly I would like to focus and improve on my overall teacher identity and the persona I convey while leading the class. Since I have already been coteaching for the past few weeks I feel confident on working on my presense as a teacher. Being the one in charge means speaking with a loud voice, acting confident in what I am saying, and to be authoritative when it comes to handling students and pushing them to go further. This is something I look forward to doing next week since I am in my ideal environment to practice this. When it comes to lesson planning I am feeling pretty excited considering the students are already engaged in the book they are reading and are open-minded to new ativities in the classroom. A potential debate and a lesson on the power of influence are already in the works. I want to make these lessons as engaging and hans-on as possible while providing students the right tools and guidance to make them successful. I lookk forward to take all that I have learned and put it to practice in one last hurrah before student teaching.

Challenge Accepted

This week at Alan Shawn Feinstein Middle School was a week of change as Katie and I moved on from simply observing to actually taking center stage in the classroom. Ms. Tundis presented us with the challenge to take over two of her classes by reading the novel, A Chance in the World out loud to the students. We happily accepted this unexpected offer and jumped right into the novel. We also had to use our judgement to decide which parts to stop on and foster a brief discussion. Our English expertise paid off since we were both able to make on the spot decisions regarding which points we wanted to clarify and which parts we wanted students to express their opinions on. Reading out loud to the students was both a fun and exciting experience for myself, since I not only enjoyed the reading part but was also drawn in by student responses. Students would debate back and forth over a question as simple as whether or not one of the characters was a sympathetic or unsympathetic figure. After teaching these classes we engaged in a discussion with Ms. Tundis, in which she expressed her perspective on the benefits of reading a story to the class. She said how most teachers would view this as being extremely oldschool, but that this technique allows for students to comprehend and engage in the novel during those during reading discussions. Also, students are better able to understand and become engaged since it is being read with expression and not in a monotone voice. I could not agree with Ms. Tundis more and plan on implementing this as much as possible in a classroom of my own one day. I wonder if this book would have been as successful in another classroom had students been assigned to read chapters on their own for homework. Would they still be anxiously asking the teacher if their going to focus on the novel in class? Would they have as much knowledge of the events and characters?

Classroom or Courtroom?

 

       This week I began my new experience at Alan Shawn Feinstein Middle School in Coventry. Although I have only observed the students for two days I can already tell that Ms. Tundis has a motivated and strongly opinionated group of eighth grade students. The students were so eager to raise their hands and participate for every question that was thrown at them. I can honestly say that the whole concept of wait-time would not have to be used at all with these eighth graders. As I watched students debate back and forth in a polite manner over a simple question the teacher asked I was beyond impressed at their responses and level of engagement. Students began to state examples from the text in support of their position, make up real life situations relating to the topic at hand, and use accountable talk statements created for a respectable way to carry on a conversation. I felt as if I was in a courtroom of “literary lawyers” who would stop at nothing to prove their point. The students both initiated and conducted their own debate that could have kept going had the bell not interrupted them.  I was so impressed with their ability to build off of one another’s opinions and pull out solid examples from the text. In addition to this I was able to witness the extent to which engaging novels play on the learning’s of a class room full of pre-teens. Ms. Tundis and her students are midway through reading a novel titled, An Orphan Who Had a Chance. When Ms. Tundis told students to close their books and pack up for lunch they all begged her to keep reading and even said they would rather stay in her class than go to lunch. Hearing a bunch of eighth graders get upset about going to lunch certainly took me by surprise! I wonder what types of reading materials I can bring into the classroom that will peak students interest to this magnitude. It was evident through classroom discussions and the high participation levels that these students truly enjoyed being in this classroom and were having fun from reading this book.

       One of the main things I immediately noticed from the second I walked into the classroom was the unique teacher identity that Ms. Tundis has created for herself. The way she interacts with students is on a personal yet professional level. She possesses such a strong teacher presence that I hope I can one day create for myself. Students respect her and she respects students. It is clear that she has high expectations for her students, in which they want to rise up to. I cannot wait to work with this group of kids since I know they are a group that is ready to learn and ready become active participants in their own learning.