Internship Reflection– Week #4

Week four was full of ups and downs. The eighth graders in my language arts classes spent the week finishing writing assignments that concluded their Holocaust unit. As I wrote last week, each of my mentor teachers presented the assignments a bit differently—one gave the students all three writing prompts at once and let them go, and one teacher gave them one prompt a day with designated time to work on each assignment. It seems that students in both teachers’ classes did fairly well with the assignment; in both, I saw students doing work who had struggled to complete assignments so far. Though I think this was partly due to students being seated in rows this week instead of in groups, I think the slower, more measured pace in the classes where the assignment was broken up helped students focus on one task at a time instead of becoming overwhelmed. We were encouraged to see several of our students who are normally distracted or reluctant to do any work actually complete all three assignments.

The sixth grade language arts class also spent the week writing. They finished up the essays they drafted last week, peer edited them, and crafted final copies. My mentor teacher and I were impressed with how well they did. I felt like we helped them through the essay very methodically and purposefully and it showed in their writing. A poster project I did with the students a few weeks ago served as very helpful visual aids while students were writing. So many students learn through pictures and images, and I think we often forget that these can be useful even when the assignment is writing. My mentor teacher and I have talked about including a second essay in the curriculum for the class later this year based on their success with the format and our desire to prepare them for the many essays they will write as seventh graders. However, we have also had several conversations about how we will modify the assignments for the students who are writing proficiently and don’t need to rely as much on a formula. We’d like to help them see the formulas as a tool and not a rule, so they can learn when to use it and when it is okay to deviate from it.

While I had positive experiences in language arts this week, world history has been a bit of a struggle. The current world history curriculum uses a book that is almost as old as I am and relies heavily on reading and note-taking. My mentor teacher in that class and another sixth grade teacher we work with have both admitted that they don’t feel the curriculum is effective, but they don’t know how to make it better. We’ve been trying to branch out and include new sources of information, activities, and learning tools to engage students more in history. Last week’s yoga experiment was a success, but we’ve struggled this week in finding and creating appropriate texts and engaging activities that will effectively teach the learning targets students need to master. We soldier on, however. These students are too inquisitive to be stuck with dry information when they have the desire to really see it come alive. We’ve made some changes to the curriculum for next week and I’m excited to see how students respond.

From Wednesday to Friday of this week were also student-led conferences. I had the opportunity to participate in many conferences with my students, and due to a rush of many parents at once, even ended up flying solo for a few of them. I appreciated the time to get to know the parents of my students and begin a dialogue about how their student can be successful. My mentor teachers and I were able to make a few specific plans with families for supporting their students, and I think having plans in place that we know the families are supportive of them should make a difference in their student’s education. Conferences were an unexpected time to also get to know the students better, especially some of my quieter students who rarely open up in class. I liked how the conferences were student-led, which meant that students had to take responsibility for explaining their work to their families. Both of my mentor teachers had students fill out self-evaluations prior to the conference. The evaluations described their work efforts, strengths, and weaknesses. Parents seemed interested to read through these, and, coupled with the student’s work samples, I think the self-evaluations gave parents an insight into their student’s self-perception and how it was helping or hurting their work. I’m glad I was able to experience the conferences and meet the parents, especially as I will be assuming more of the responsibility for the classrooms in the coming weeks.