Quick Teaching
Now that FSA is over the stress has dwindled down on the students. The classroom can now enjoy fun learning activities that allows them to be creative, one activity is “Geometry Town”. A student centered activity already prepared by my CT but I was in charge of introducing it to the second class. I came up with guidelines for the assignment and decided how many groups or partners there would be for this project. The winner between both classes would be rewarded with a prize and of course an A grade. I did have to make some changes along the way because during my explanation I realized all the students had no idea what a map legend was, I did have an example that I had already created and when they saw it they said “a keybox”. So a keybox it is and changed that name so it was easier for them to understand. The project took two days and they even had to include written directions on how to get to one place to another using key terms (parallel, perpendicular, intersecting) and the use of compass (south, north, west, and east), this part was by far the hardest for them to accomplish. But with teacher one on one instruction to each group and modeling for them on their map using finger tracing then they understood. It was a short week and there was no time for planning for next week but we did discuss brining morning meetings into the classroom to help students get along. There has been student conflicts of students not respecting each other and we hope that with morning meetings this can help promote respect among them. I will be doing mooring meetings on the mornings that I am there. On Thursday I was fortunate to make several phone calls to the students’ parents to help translate for my CT. This gave me a chance to communicate with the parents and not just during parent conference night.
Now that FSA is over the stress has dwindled down on the students. The classroom can now enjoy fun learning activities that allows them to be creative, one activity is “Geometry Town”. A student centered activity already prepared by my CT but I was in charge of introducing it to the second class. I came up with guidelines for the assignment and decided how many groups or partners there would be for this project. The winner between both classes would be rewarded with a prize and of course an A grade. I did have to make some changes along the way because during my explanation I realized all the students had no idea what a map legend was, I did have an example that I had already created and when they saw it they said “a keybox”. So a keybox it is and changed that name so it was easier for them to understand. The project took two days and they even had to include written directions on how to get to one place to another using key terms (parallel, perpendicular, intersecting) and the use of compass (south, north, west, and east), this part was by far the hardest for them to accomplish. But with teacher one on one instruction to each group and modeling for them on their map using finger tracing then they understood. It was a short week and there was no time for planning for next week but we did discuss brining morning meetings into the classroom to help students get along. There has been student conflicts of students not respecting each other and we hope that with morning meetings this can help promote respect among them. I will be doing mooring meetings on the mornings that I am there. On Thursday I was fortunate to make several phone calls to the students’ parents to help translate for my CT. This gave me a chance to communicate with the parents and not just during parent conference night.