November 13-17, 2006 Observation

November 13, 2006

Today’s class was interesting. It was one of the first times I really had to alter what I planned to do. I stuck to my plan but I had to cut stuff out because it seemed that the students in the first class needed the extra one on one time to clarify questions on the first section. The round robin activity seemed to work better in the second class than it did the first one. I like giving the students some in-class time to do some research and ask if their sources would work or if their topic is ok. If I had done my whole lesson plan I think I would have had a whole class worth of stuff rather than a half an hour. I think the students understand that assignment a little bit more now after I talked to them. It feels a lot more natural to be teaching then it did at the beginning of the semester.

November 15, 2006

I am realizing that I over plan for classes, which in my mind is a good thing as compared to not having enough planned. The students really got into the idea of taking their paper and having to visually represent it. I went with this idea for a number of different reasons: the students could do some more brainstorming, the students could understand the idea of multiple interpretations of pictures and the students could see how pictures will work with the student’s text. After the students made their collages they looked at another student’s work and tried to understand what the student was trying to get across. This helped the students gather their ideas and be creative with what they were working on.

November 17, 2006

Today’s class did not deal directly with assignment four but more with the use of transitional words. I wanted to do something a little more on the creative and fun side, like Wednesday’s class, and so I had the students break off into groups. I had a list of 24 transitional words on the board and the students had to pick 10 of these words and make a story. The groups were really creative and there was a lot of laughing going on as the groups shared their stories. I know the students realize that transition words are more than first, second, then,  and finally which was the point of the activity.