Journal #1
Thoughts from the Week: The week seemed to take forever, once I entered the classroom. However, the favorite part of my day is the end of math, right before I leave for the day. This is my favorite part of practicum because it is a time when I actually get to work with, help, and interact with the students. This week was especially amazing because I helped a student who normally becomes frustrated during math. When I began helping this student she kept telling me that she could not do it. However, after a little encouragement and further explanations, not to mention a lot of high fives, she began to grasp the concept. Even better than her grasping the concept, I could tell that she was enjoying what she was doing, and enjoying my help. It was really exciting to see how excited she was to share her answers with the class. I could tell that she had gained some confidence in the small amount of time that I worked with her, and she was proud of the work that she had accomplished. One particular low from the week was when I viewed literacy instruction. This was a low for the week because the instruction seems incredibly boring and inefficient. The reading was just having the students take turns reading paragraphs from a textbook, and calling on their peers to read the next passage. There …show more content…
In my cooperating teachers classroom, it was difficult for me to see a lot of student engagement this week. However, one piece of student engagement that I saw occurred during math instruction. During math, the students were actively engaged at the beginning of the lesson as the students reviewed the information that they had learned the previous day. The students were engaged because they had to answer various questions on their white board and show the answer to the teacher. This kept students accountable and engaged in the content. Also, all students love to write on white boards, which also helped to keep engagement high during this portion of the