Week 2

This was the first full week of classes and I was able to work with both small and large groups of students. In order to gauge the reading and comprehension level of the two 10th grade classes, we split into small groups and the students assigned to Mr. Barrett, Mrs. Beres, or myself, were asked to alternate reading three short stories aloud to the rest of the group. In my small group students read these stories with relatively low difficulty. Throughout the stories, I would pause to ask the students some basic comprehension questions to gauge their grasp of the material as well as keep them involved in the activity. The students also answered the questions at the end of the stories and the unit. Once this activity was finished students worked on creating a 4-fold vocabulary study sheet, in order to study the words and definitions from these short stories for the corresponding test that ensued on Friday.

On Wednesday and Thursday I taught my first lesson, about six word memoirs, which I utilized for all six classes. After teaching this lesson to the 1st period Honors English, I decided to tweak the lesson to adjust to the learning differences of the collaborative 5th and 7th period English classes. I extended the original six word memoir lesson to include a power point presentation which encompassed an activity that required each student to come to the board to write down their individual response to a prompt, thus making the students more involved in the lesson. This particular method of presentation seemed to get students more interested and involved in the lesson, so I then applied it to the remaining 2nd, 6th, and 8th period Honors English classes. The feedback I received from the students and Mr. Barrett assured me that this was a solid lesson, that the students got something out of, as well as enjoyed. After this lesson, all of the classes took their assigned vocabulary tests, and upon completion were given an essay to read, take notes on, answer questions about , and decipher vocabulary words from, based on context clues. During this time, I worked individually with various students to help them comprehend the material, answer any questions they might have, as well as helped to motivate them to work on/complete the assigned essay (as they needed it, being that it was the last part of the school week). Overall, it was a very exciting and productive week! J