Second week of school, less time off from storms and more learning. I'm starting to get into the thick of the internship, meaning I'm starting to plan and create lessons to teach. Unlike other internships I have to find places and times to teach. One opportunity is during the month of march where students in the 7th grade have a month of classes based on making products or producing something taught by individuals from certain fields. The school is going to allow me to teach a computer programming class during that month. I will be using scratch.mit.edu to teach students.
Other opportunity I have is to teach are a lunch club that is also playing with scratch, but haven't started the programming aspect of it and need help learning it. There is also a chance to work with special education students who want to learn programming before they go to high school so they will be in a good position when they sign up for a new class at the high school.
Classes are going well. I've started to interact with the students a bit more. I answer questions and give advice on their class work. I got to do some discipline time with some students who didn't want to do the class work or missed the point of the assignment. That was a good learning experience in its self. It takes a lot of patience and finding out what motives a student can be difficult but I managed to help the best I could. The thing that stuck out the most of this week was the different learning styles of students and how it affects what they do in class. You have to plan accordingly to the individualized students and what works best for them. I know this from theory but its amazing to see it in practice.
Monday, February 24, 2014
Monday, February 17, 2014
Student Teaching: Week 1
I finally started student teaching. Granted it wasn't a full week because of a big snow storm but it was interesting. It's a little different I think then some of my friends experience in teaching. My mentor teacher has three different class periods, each one is different from the last. The first is a class of 32 7th and 8th graders, the second is a class of 16 made up of 6th graders, the last class is a class of 2, you read right only two kids in the class and both are 6th grades. In every period there is at least four teachers plus myself. Really different atmosphere in all the different classes.
The students focus on making their student portfolio in Google Sites. Its really a really and simple way to make a webpage. In order to be more of a help to students I decided to learn how to use Google Sites. This decision was made after I tried to answer a question on day one but couldn't because I had never used Google Sites before, thus I started a new E-portfolio in Google Sites where I can learn and be better able to help students. I'm currently trying to figure out how to put RSS feeds on a page!
In the course of that first week I got the opportunity to write up direction for student to follow. The direction weren't for a real assignment, they were for an extra/bonus assignment students can do if they finish their class work early. The instructions were about how students can add avatars from certain sites to their homepage. The three sites in question are doppelme.com, buildyourwildself.com, and voki.com. It took some learning and playing around to figure out the best way to describe the process of adding these items to their Google Sites. Voki was very difficult but I wound up finding a few different ways of doing it. I actual learned how to use screencast.com, in order to record the process students must take in order to add the voki. It gave a good visual way to instruct students.
I also got to grade student reflection. The hardest part about the reflection was commenting on them. I went with a positive and negative comment, but sometimes I needed to be more suggestive on how students can improve their reflections. The students who did an exceptional job were hard to give advice on how to improve. Over the course of the week I did a good amount of grading and got faster and better at grading the reflections, but the first day or two it was a slow crawl to learn.
I got the lovely chance to do bus duty in the morning, and then got volunteered to do it every morning for the rest of my time there. Not the most exciting job and it gets pretty cold out there in the winter morning. All and all it was a productive week with some good learning experiences.
The students focus on making their student portfolio in Google Sites. Its really a really and simple way to make a webpage. In order to be more of a help to students I decided to learn how to use Google Sites. This decision was made after I tried to answer a question on day one but couldn't because I had never used Google Sites before, thus I started a new E-portfolio in Google Sites where I can learn and be better able to help students. I'm currently trying to figure out how to put RSS feeds on a page!
In the course of that first week I got the opportunity to write up direction for student to follow. The direction weren't for a real assignment, they were for an extra/bonus assignment students can do if they finish their class work early. The instructions were about how students can add avatars from certain sites to their homepage. The three sites in question are doppelme.com, buildyourwildself.com, and voki.com. It took some learning and playing around to figure out the best way to describe the process of adding these items to their Google Sites. Voki was very difficult but I wound up finding a few different ways of doing it. I actual learned how to use screencast.com, in order to record the process students must take in order to add the voki. It gave a good visual way to instruct students.
I also got to grade student reflection. The hardest part about the reflection was commenting on them. I went with a positive and negative comment, but sometimes I needed to be more suggestive on how students can improve their reflections. The students who did an exceptional job were hard to give advice on how to improve. Over the course of the week I did a good amount of grading and got faster and better at grading the reflections, but the first day or two it was a slow crawl to learn.
I got the lovely chance to do bus duty in the morning, and then got volunteered to do it every morning for the rest of my time there. Not the most exciting job and it gets pretty cold out there in the winter morning. All and all it was a productive week with some good learning experiences.
Monday, February 3, 2014
Why I haven't Posted in a while!?
Work mostly.
Not school work.
Not internship work.
A full time job that has nothing to do with my degrees but pays the bills anyways. Why do I have said job? It took a year to find placement for my internship. I finished everything else for my master's program in August except my internship. About a week ago I an email finally saying they found placement for me in a school. I'm super excited and really nervous.
One thing I learned so far...
School doesn't prepare you for the internship in anyway. I haven't started and I am already overwhelmed and can visibly see gaps in my knowledge. Example you say!? Smart boards, since high school I have had a smart board in my class rooms every year, yet somehow I have never used one once. You would think in my schooling to be a technology integrator they would've taught us how to use a smart board. Nope. I know why we use them but not the how. It can't be hard to learn but I feel like this is something that should be covered in the learning for this particular degree.
Anyways! I'm excited! My mentor teacher is really awesome and resourceful and I think I can learn a lot. The big issue I have is that she only teaches 3 days a week so the other two I plan on doing lots of observations and a fair amount of planning/learning the other parts of this job.
One other issue I have is the Praxis II. I'm not really sure which test I take because I'm a technology integrator and NH doesn't have a test for that, I need to find out what Praxis II I need to take, study, and take it while doing my internship and working part time every night because interns don't get paid! Life is never dull, and there is always something to do! Sorry got no awesome pictures :P
Not school work.
Not internship work.
A full time job that has nothing to do with my degrees but pays the bills anyways. Why do I have said job? It took a year to find placement for my internship. I finished everything else for my master's program in August except my internship. About a week ago I an email finally saying they found placement for me in a school. I'm super excited and really nervous.
One thing I learned so far...
School doesn't prepare you for the internship in anyway. I haven't started and I am already overwhelmed and can visibly see gaps in my knowledge. Example you say!? Smart boards, since high school I have had a smart board in my class rooms every year, yet somehow I have never used one once. You would think in my schooling to be a technology integrator they would've taught us how to use a smart board. Nope. I know why we use them but not the how. It can't be hard to learn but I feel like this is something that should be covered in the learning for this particular degree.
Anyways! I'm excited! My mentor teacher is really awesome and resourceful and I think I can learn a lot. The big issue I have is that she only teaches 3 days a week so the other two I plan on doing lots of observations and a fair amount of planning/learning the other parts of this job.
One other issue I have is the Praxis II. I'm not really sure which test I take because I'm a technology integrator and NH doesn't have a test for that, I need to find out what Praxis II I need to take, study, and take it while doing my internship and working part time every night because interns don't get paid! Life is never dull, and there is always something to do! Sorry got no awesome pictures :P
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