Student Teaching: Day 14
This past weekend was supposed to be my opportunity to catch up and get my head above water, but unfortunately, that didn’t happen. I mostly used the weekend to catch up with people I hadn’t seen in a while, which was important to me because at this stage, I might as well. Any other time may not be possible. I was able to finish assignments that were dangerously close to the deadline, but other than that not much got done.
Which is what brings me today. I didn’t really have anything planned today, Monday, except to finish up foreshadowing with the classes. I know my c.t. wanted to move on to another unit shortly after, but having no idea about that, I couldn’t really prepare. So I just got the resources I needed to wrap up foreshadowing and that was that.
Today was a pretty hectic day for my c.t.. There was so much grading to be done and input before the end of the day, and of course students were coming out of the woodworks to tell her to add late assignments and tell her she hadn’t updated certain grades. She started the new unit she wanted - which is about power, so I didn’t have much to do in terms of instruction - I helped check on student discussions and gave some clarifying statements.
I did get to work with my last class. However, I didn’t follow the notes I had about keeping lessons fast paced to keep students up and moving. Students were pretty distracted and talked but didn't write. It didn’t help that almost half of them didn’t bring their copy of the short story we were reading in class. Though they were asked to share copies with other students, once that student starts looking for text evidence, the other is left in limbo.
I tried going around and asking students about their answers and to explain themselves, but even then they were distracted and went off on tangents. I see that maybe it’s best to group them rather than let them choose their groups and give them all time deadlines. I did see certain students working hard to complete the tasks and I’m really grateful they put in so much effort to learn. I hope to provide them with further clarification so they can do well on their assessment tomorrow.