Friday, March 27, 2015

FieldBlog: Shaker Middle School

In the first classroom that my group observed at Shaker Middle school the teacher had the students working on a project when we walked in. It was a seventh grade class and had about twenty kids in it. Each of the students had a computer to work with. The teacher told us about all of the other projects that she had her students do and it seemed like a lot of fun projects that would create not only productivity in the classroom, but it would also spark a lot of creativity as well. The second classroom we went to was a mix of sixth and seventh graders and had eighteen students in it, they are both relativly small classrooms.The second one had two sides of desks with an isle going down the middle so there was no back of the room. Mrs. Roth was the teacher in this room and she had been teaching for seventeen years. She had the students working i small groups or with partners on a project to write a rap about events that they were working on in the chapter that they were reading. It was a good way to connect the students to subjects that they may not have been interested in while connecting them to something that they already relate to in rap. We were not in either of the classes very long, and in the second classroom there was not much to observe because the students were finishing up a project. She did answer many questions about being a teacher though and she was very helpful.

BlogPost 10

From what I have learned in class, and what I personally believe from my past experiences in education, I think that to have a good education you need to have a few things. The first thing that you need to have a good education is to have a safe learning environment. A safe learning environment is crucial, if a student feels uncomfortable in a classroom, and is too scared to participate in class because they are afraid that they are going to be wrong then the student is not going learn very well. A student should also not have to be worried about being bullied or discriminated against for any reason in a classroom. Everybody should be accepting of others no matter what their beliefs, sexual orientation, race, etc. I believe that everybody should do whatever makes them happy, and that they should not have to be worried about what others think of them. But even better than that i think that people should just accept others for who they are. We are all human beings so we should all respect each other for who we are, no matter if it contradicts what we personally believe or not. Everyone is equal and should be treated that wayAnother key component to having a good education, is for the teacher to know all of its students very well. A teacher needs to know how the students learns to be able to teach them. If they do not know the best way their students learn then how are they going to teach them to the best of their abilities.

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Observation Hours: Hours 6-10

I was with Mr. Joseph again. He continued the project from the day before in class. During these periods the classes were just finishing up what they had started the day before. Since they were almost near the end he just watched most of the time and let the students work until they needed help. He also added another part of the project, he made the students find a pop culture reference that related to the section that they were assigned to summarize. To help them out he gave them an example of a song that had lyrics about war in them. If they needed help with this he would give them more examples of what they needed that led them towards something that was relatable to the subject.

Observation Hours: Hours 1-5

For my ten observational hours, I decided to observe a teacher at my former high school, Mr. Joseph. He is a freshman world history teacher at Kirtland High School.
Observation:
For his lesson on the first day he posed a situation for all of his classes where his students had to write summaries of sections of the chapter. He broke the students into seven different groups where they were each assigned a section of the chapter. Mr. Joseph explained the project to the students and then let them go on their way. After a few minutes of letting the students get set up and beginning to work, he went around to each group and helped them out if they had any questions. He did not simply give them the answers, he gave them help and guided them to the correct responses he was looking for.
What Happened:
This lesson was very useful for many reasons, instead of standing at the front of class lecturing the entire class period he broke them into groups and sort of delegated the power and productivity to the students. The students had to do the learning and work themselves instead of it being spoon fed to them. Some of the students struggled with parts of the sections and would ask questions. Some of the students were just being lazy and wanted an easy way out so he would push them to figure it out themselves. Other times there were students where he knew that they needed a little more guidance to get to the right conclusion so he would give them a little more help.

Monday, March 9, 2015

BlogPost 7

When Ayers talks about building bridges, he is talking about building the bridges between students and teachers. The bridges connect the student and teacher to help them relate to each other. Two other pertinent examples of building bridges was childhood to adulthood and the bridge toward  the center, from the powerless to power.
I do not understand this portion of the the blogpost. I will finish it after I ask quesstions in class on how to do it.

FieldBlog 2: Heights High School

Question Posed for observation: How does a teacher generate activity and productivity in their classroom?

For our second school visit at Cleveland Heights High School I was supposed to observe Mr. Evans freshman history class. I was unable to do so because his class was taking the new Parks test. Instead of observing his class he took me to another teachers class, Mrs Underwood. Mrs. Underwood taught remedial English to juniors.

Observations:
Class was started with bell work that everybody had to do. The question was, what are the three types of sentences found in a paragraph? After the bell work was completed students were to finish an outline that they had previously started in class. No student was done with the outline yet, but after they finished it they were given a OGT prep prompt to about. Throughout the class the teacher worked individually with the students.

Opinions:
The bell work was a productive way to get class started and to get the students focused. It was a fairly easy question but none of the students knew the answer off of the top of their heads so the teacher allowed them to look it up on their phones. She also allowed the students to use their phones throughout the entire class period. They were a group of kids who did not focus or cooperate very easily so it looked like her allowance of cell phone usage was a way to get on their good side to get their cooperation. During the class period the teacher mostly worked individually with the students to give each of the students the extra help that they needed. The class only had 7 students in it which made it easier for the teacher to do this.