Final Eval...

I just finished up my last lesson for my field experience and received my final evaluation from my cooperating teacher. I was very pleased with my evaluation, Mrs. Dowell wrote that I have a natural gift for teaching, which was really encouraging. I thought my lessons all turned out well, but I did learn a lot.

10 min lesson

For some reason, I find it so easy to make my 10 minute lessons fun but when it comes to planning my lessons for actual teaching, I tend to just stick to notes and an activity. I try to make the activities as fun as possible but it seems that this can become just as monotonous as taking notes when you don't change it up enough. I was thinking about playing music for my lesson tomorrow--what do you think Christopher? :)

K.B.

Last lesson!

So it appears as if I have come full circle in my field experience--I will be teaching my last lesson on Thursday! I am teaching definition of function including the vertical line test and domain and range. I was thinking about having the students go through the alphabet in pairs and see which letters define a function. Would this be a good activity??? I'm having trouble thinking of ways to make this lesson fun--help Chris! :)

Teaching..The Real Deal

Tomorrow is my first day of real teaching to real students! haha. I will be teaching graphing using intercepts and I'm so nervous! I do not want to give the pre-test and post-test because I feel the students will be discouraged by the amount of quizzing in one class time. But I only put 2 questions on each and plan to explain that this is just for my class. I'm excited and I can't wait to get my first lesson under my belt! :)

Bullying Assessment & Eval

In class activity.....sorta like a DR-TA

Before listening, have students define bullying in their own words and fill in Cause and Effect graphic organizer as to what they think are causes of bullying and effects of bullying.
During listening, note statistics that interest them and continue to fill out Cause and Effect chart--make changes to what they have already predicted.
After listening, reflect on bullying and complete Cause and Effect chart and share with the class.

For evaluation, have students complete a 1 page journal entry on how bullying has influenced them if at all, and how they can be a part of the solution to the bullying problem. Share with a partner and have each partner give feedback to each other's ideas. Hand in to teacher and have teacher also give feedback! Completion and understanding points!!!

Kourtney & Chris

Field Placement (continued)

Yesterday, I went back to Minerva Middle School and even more awesome-er things happened. Mrs. Dowell gave me 3 folders full of resources such as useful websites, first day of school sheets, contact information sheets, and lots more! This is my first experience with a teacher who seems to want to help me in becoming a teacher. When I think about how much time I spend in my field experience a week, I realized how much of an impact it has on my teacher training. When I become a teacher, I hope I am able to utilize and be a resource to a teacher candidate and really help them to learn about the profession! I also went over standards and applying them to the classroom with Mrs. Dowell and her and another math teacher use the "chunking" method where they chunk together the most important standards and come up with a timeline for teaching each chunk. It was kind of overwhelming to see all the work they had to put in when putting together each chunk and all the resources needed for that chunk. However, Mrs. Dowell reassured me that once you've done it once, you have a template to refer to and it gets easier every year.....that is, until the goverment makes more changes! hahahaha. I can't wait to teach my lessons--but I am still nervous, too! One student asked me how tall I was and did not believe I was 20.... :( haha

Field Experience

I went to Minerva Middle School yesterday and LOVED it....as expected! My cooperating is AWESOME and I felt comfortable jumping right in and actually got to help a lot of students already. Mrs. Dowell's classroom is covered wall to wall with posters and student work. She has a bulletin board for "Random Acts of Kindness" that students are encouraged to post what good deeds they did throughout the week. Anyways, I'm super excited and can't wait to go back!