Experiences with my cooperating teacher so far

I’m getting a better feel for the class and the teacher’s style as the semester progresses. There is definitely a attitude present at this school that is evident everywhere, and I don’t mean that in a negative way. The kids here seem not as interested in education as most of us probably were, but at the same time most are mature for their age. The atmosphere seems to be non-combative; as in their aren’t many behavior problems, but an overflow of enthusiasm isn’t present either.

The only reason I mention this subject is that it’s necessary to properly understand my cooperating teacher’s style. She doesn’t push the kids to hard, she can’t. As the Professor said, “as a teacher you must pick you’re battles”; and an uber strict teacher would not survive at this school in my opinion. She would spend to much time involved in disputes which would detract from learning. With that said, learning does take place, but it’s in a manner which best suits this school. I know one or both of our Professors will disagree with this, and I will undoubtedly be more strict in my classroom, but I don’t think I could educate these kids using my style as much as she can hers.

She knows the subject, a definite bonus. But she has a knack for shrugging off minor problem behaviors, and doesn’t allow them to distract from the lesson. Major problem behaivors haven’t occured, and I don’t anticipate they will. My cooperating teacher uses PowerPoint a lot and groupwork. I like powerpoint to supplement lecture in small doses, not as the primary source to communicate the material. But I do like how she uses groupwork for a variety of reasons. Thats all for now.

Observation

Today I observed my cooperating teacher give a lecture followed by a quiz, which was then followed by a group project. The lecture was good. It was the first concerning the unit on market structures. This lesson was about perfect competition; my second video teach wednesday next will extend upon the analysis and discuss the basic components of the monopolistic competion and oligopoly models.

I noticed my cooperating teacher has a printout of Bloom’s taxonomy stapled to her wall; and the lecture activated several of the levels theorized by Bloom. Students were engaged in the activity through the use of funny anecotes combined with real life examples. These techniques helped ensure the students were paying attention during the dry but important details found later in the lesson.

Students were instructed to take notes during the lecture, which was a power point presentation. An open note quiz immediately followed, and students were allowed to use use their notes. None of the questions completely reached the evaluation level. A couple of them were taken litterally straight from the lecture, and the other two addressed slightly higher levels of the taxonomy. The quiz did a good job of identifying the most important aspects of the material, but nonetheless was still fairly easy.

The group project following the quiz challenged the students to apply the information learned in lecture using their own creative impulses. Students were asked to design a product competing in a perfectely competitive model, using the models four basic tenets learned through the lecture. At the very least, the project approached the evaluation level; although student motivation determained how high up the ladder to climb. Students who tried to be innovative and challenge the material learned a lot.

Geography with ELL

Today’s session was by far the best we’ve had up to this point. Maybe it was the subject matter, or it could be we’re just learning to communicate with each other better, but the most likely reason for my ELL’s success is probably a combination of both. The lesson started with a simple question, “what area of the world is this?” (Middle East). He wasn’t able to name any of the countries or landmarks before the lesson started, and given the worksheet handed to us by the Geography teacher was admittedly hard, I was a little nervous at first.

We started with a simple goal, memorize six countries which are important to understanding the region. The five I chose were Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. We learned these five really fast, roughly 3 or 4 minutes, and I started to get optimistic. But the next landmarks were undoubtedly going to be a lot tougher. On the agenda were seas such as the Red, Arabian, Mediterrean and Caspian; Mountians such as the Tauras, Elburz, and Zargos; and Gulfs such as Aden, Oman, and Persian. Thats a pretty heavy plate for a student who hasn’t yet learned how to discern the Middle East on a world map.

But like the countries, he was able memorize all those landmarks and more fairly easily. We constantly reviewed previously learned landmarks and countries, so that those wouldn’t go forgotten. The best part of the session was that my student was overtly trying to memorize these terms, and did so at such a pace that rough understanding of the world map could easily be attained within a couple of weeks. The session ended when handed him a blank map and said, “fill in everything we’ve learned”. He was able to label approximently 20 terms on the map with minimal spelling errors after only an hour and no word bank. Thats pretty good in my book.

I think the main lesson I’ve taken from this assignment is how much reading and writing skills are holding him back more than would be expected. He learned those terms fast enough for me to conclude that had he recieved more one on one attention, finding the Middle East on a map should be easy for him at this point. There was a gap between what he could recite back and what he could write, which was the first time I truly grasped how his writing was more problematic than he lets on.

Second meeting with ELL

The second meeting went more or less the same as the first.  I tried to build rapport by discussing some of the issues that were mentioned last meeting, but he was still rather shy.  Questions such as, “How’s math class going?” and “Have you played with the soccer team yet?” were areas alluded to from our first meeting.  After an intial get to re-know each other period we got to work.  I was excited to teach instead of trying to have a conversation with someone not interested in talking.  

During the script, he appeared as if he was putting forth a decent effort in attempting to answer the questions, which as a teacher seems to be all you can really ask.   We read passages from Breaking through, and analyzed the material further by answering the questions provided.  He’s able to speak and sound out English words well.  I’m not so sure how well he is able to understand the words he is able to pronounce so effortlessly.  He could answer some of the questions correctly very fast, but others took longer than expected.  Words such as “grinned” and “motioned” gave him trouble, and it is understandable how the passage would be difficult to grasp without knowing these words.  I am very bad at gauging the reading level of a student who is well below where they should be.  Just talking he’s a smart kid who understands how to speak English, and there’s a good chance I assume he should be a better reader than is reasonable.

I tried to repeatedly check for understanding of the vocabulary, and we went over words such as “grinned” that he didn’t know.  Also, I asked him to speak in Spanish or tell me what his initial thoughts were on questions that were giving him difficulty.  But he was prone to giving the exact right answer or none at all.  On the other hand, he did immediately know the word “curandero”, noting it was some sort of person who cures.   You could tell he enjoys reading the Spanish words, so if I was trying to appeal to his interests a book rooted in Spanish would be the way to go.

Since he doesn’t like to point out words or concepts he doesn’t know; vocabulary strategies before, during, and after the lesson seem warranted.  Minimizing jargon and using correct grammer are also important.