Mission First Day at Romig: Completed
Whew! I can't believe I had myself sort of psyched out for today. My teacher, Ms. R, kind of scared me because she asked me some pretty big questions in our pre-practicum email, but she's super nice! I think I'll just head through the email chronologically, then discuss the environmental features.
I woke up at exactly 7:16... just kidding.
I did get to Romig Middle School about 15 minutes early and checked in- I didn't need a parking pass or anything, so that was nice- and I headed to Ms. R's room. The first thing I noticed was that on the outside of her door, they had a HUGE piece of paper covering the door saying "We love Twilight" with a whole bunch of photos of all of the characters. I was like "this will be a fun class." The class was working when I got there, so before she introduced me, she told me a little about the class.
They're all 7th graders who, for some reason or another, need a support class. So none of the students have IEP's or are ESL learners, but one might be doing advanced math but reading at a 3rd grade level, or they might be an advanced reader, but struggling with math. Ms. R. said she even has a couple who just struggle with social skills and need extra attention.
These students are arranged into a "team" with Ms. R teaching support Reading, language arts and Social studies and Mr. E (the teacher next door who is the other Team Teacher) teaches Math and Science and support Math. The students flip flop between the two teachers for six out of the eight periods in the day, with the other two being an elective and PE. The classroom is a technology classroom, so each student has a laptop and Ms. R uses a smartboard at the front of the class.
So Ms. R introduced me to the students and told me that today I could observe, but in the upcoming weeks, she was going to put me to work. I was there for two periods, both language arts, and she gave both classes a spelling test--that I graded, thank you very much!-- and then the students all worked on their powerpoint presentations on brand new Macbooks (excuse me while I indulge in my fit of jealousy :) I just walked around and observed unless one of the students had questions, then I helped out.
Well, that was my day--the students were pretty cool. I was sort of surprised since middle school wasn't my preferred age, but I didn't run away crying.
Physical Environment
The class was set up into 4 long tables facing the front of the room, which was where the smart board was located. In the back, Ms. R had a big carpet that had a lot of pillows on it where the students could sit and read if they had completed their assignment. Her desk was in the back of the room facing the door, where she could observe both the classroom and the carpeted area. The resources in the room were drool-worthy. Every student had a Macbook and Ms. R used the SmartBoard. She also let the students use the board for the spelling test review.
Curricular Environment
The environment was very open and free. The students could talk to one another and ask questions of Ms. R without raising their hands. They could also get up and move about the room--such as go to the carpet-- if they wanted to read. They each had a copy of the same book (the adventures of Ulysseus, I think) and the assignment was up on the board. The assignment after the spelling test was to work on an essay that they had previously started about Ulysseus, which they wrote on their Macbooks. When the essay was completed, they submitted it online into a program called My Access Schools, which actually graded the essay out of 6 points. Ms. R. said that if they didn't score a 4 or above, they would need to re-submit it. The students could go into the "edit" function and this program would go through the essay and highlight what needed to be fixed without substituting the answers, like Word would. For example, one student spelled a word incorrectly and it was highlighted in the EDIT function and just said "misspelled word."
Human Environment
The cultural background was pretty diverse in this group, although they were all native English speakers. None had IEP's or needed special education--they all just need focused attention in one way or another, mostly reading or math. The environment is extremely laid-back, so all of the students were free to talk (which most of them did!), but a few stayed silent. Most sat with friends, except for one student who was told to sit by himself so he could concentrate...unless he wanted to work through lunch. :)
Whoa- this was a long post, but that's what happened today. Overall, I'm really happy with my placement and especially my teacher, who's super nice. I'm just crossing my fingers that the middle school age will work out for me. Cross your fingers too!
Posted in: First Day, Practicum, Romig on Friday, February 12, 2010 at at 6:09 PM
Testing, testing
Hi, crossing my fingers for you! What did you notice in particular about their essays? I was at Romig at well getting familiar with the My Access program and checking in with all the kids on what they were working on, what their areas of concern were, and whether I could answer any questions they had. One thing I noticed was just what we recently discussed in class; the writing skills varied a lot for students in one class together. Did you have any kids that needed help in certain areas? What kind of advice seemed to help them most?
Did you happen to see what the spelling errors were on the tests? Are there some phonetic spellers in the class? Did students use paper or electronic dictionaries to correct their work or not at all? How did they correct it?
The My Access program sounds like a great tool. I have a lot of the same questions Nicole metioned about the spelling test. I am happily surprised at the acces chilren have to technology in our school district; my classroom didnt have mac books but they did have several computers. Its crazy to think that when I was in elementary we didnt even have a computer lab!
Well, the spelling errors were actually mostly phonetic. For example, so many of the students wrote "puncuation" instead of "punctuation" or "compond" insetead of "compound." Nicole, I didn't see any use of dictionaries except for one time. Funny story- one of their spelling words was "nomad" and one of the students was adamant that a nomad was a giant wanderer while another student was sure that a nomad could be any-sized person. They looked it up in the dictionaries on the MacBooks. :) Since I was grading the tests, I didn't spend a lot of time walking around the class seeing how the students worked in my access until the last five minutes or so, Maia, but they were just doing a last edit, so the corrections were mostly spaces between a period and the first word of the next sentence or a strangely worded sentence. Most of the advice that I gave was just to read it out loud. One of the students had the potential for a great sentence, but some of hte words were switched around and once he read it out loud, he was like "ohhhhhh" and fixed it. Keri, I know! I remember being excited to go to the computer lab once a week for an hour and now these kids each have thier own MacBooks with a SmartBoard they know more about than I do!