Field Experience Blog

Observing Writing Experiences In a class I recently observed, the teacher provided students with a "planning page template" to plan out an argumentative essay based on a novel that they had been reading.  The planning page template was projected on the SmartBoard, and students also received the template in printed form. The template listed several steps that the students had to address in sequential order. I recorded the contents of the template in my Field Experience notebook, so I will replicate it here: 1. Claim: Restate the question and answer it 2. Text Evidence #1: Use a quote  3. Reasoning: Explain your text evidence 4. Text Evidence #2: Use a paraphrase 5. Reasoning: Explain your paraphrase  6. Summary: Change the wording of your claim The teacher also, verbally, gave tips to go along with this template. He advised the students not to just throw in quotes, but to instead introduce quotes, such as by using, "The passage...

A Range of Experiences in CWC In the article "Re-Seeing (Dis)Ability: Ten Suggestions," Patricia A. Dunn approaches the topic of special education with positivity and optimism. Unfortunately, in some of the CWC classes I have observed so far, the teachers approached the handling of situations involving children with special needs in a less-than-positive manner. In one such instance, I was observing a co-taught CWC class. One of the teachers arranged for the students to partake in an online Jeopardy-style review game that they could access either on an app on their phones or by using the computers in the classroom. The website generated questions about the text "The Hound of the Baskervilles" by Sherlock Holmes, which the students were going to be tested on a few days later.  I thought this activity was a great way to integrate technology into classroom instruction. In Dunn's article, she esteems the use of technology in the classroom and sta...

In many of the classes I have observed so far, teachers utilize SmartBoards in their lessons. Also, on multiple occasions, classes I have observed have gone to a computer lab to complete some kind of web-based activity or an assignment requiring the use of a word processor. During one of my more recent observations, the teacher (who I will refer to as "Mr. G" for privacy reasons) was giving a grammar lesson. Mr. G began the lesson with a Do Now. He projected a series of sentences on the SmartBoard and asked students to choose the correct pronoun from the choices that the students were given and to indicate if the pronoun was subjective or objective. The students were first given several minutes to copy down the sentences in their notebooks and to circle their answers. Then, Mr. G asked for volunteers to come up to the board and circle their answers for the class to see. While going over the students' responses on the board, Mr. G reinforced the material by drawing a T...