Learning to Teach: Observation

Wednesday 3/23/11

I only went to the school once this week. Mostly because I hate Mondays and I left for spring break on Friday. Wednesday the students' reflective essays were due. Before turning them in, Mrs. Hooker had the students mark the passages they thought showed imagery with an 'I' and the ones that were reflective with a 'R'. She also let any students who wanted to to read their papers aloud to the class. It's easy to tell that there is an atomosphere of trust in the classroom as the students were not at all reluctant to share the personal things in their papers with the rest of the class. There was no heckling and an automatic show of support and applause from the rest of the students.

After turning in the papers Mrs. Hooker informed the student's that they would have a test on the romantic period on Friday, or Tuesday for anyone who would be leaving for spring break early. They then began the Victorian period with a hand out and a video.

For 3rd block I went to Ms. Lo's class. That particular class was an 11th grade English class. It wasn't a particularly great day for observing as she was giving a vocabulary quize which took up most of the class.
Ms. Lo let the students study for 10 minutes while she took attendence and then handed out the test and a packet on Mark Twain to be worked on once the test was done.

She had a couple of interesting rules/ideas that I liked:
Name, date, and period were all worth points on the test
Accountability system: Ungraded papers were kept in folders by her desk. Once they were graded they're given to the students. Once the students see their grade they put the work in folders that are kept in the classroom. If a graded paper leaves the classroom, Ms. Lo claims no responsibility toward it. So if the grade wasn't entered by mistake and work was lost. It's not her fault.