Week 5

This morning I had my third field experience. I think this was the best one yet! The past two times I went to the school we just worked with the students in the computer lab, but today I spent the entire time in the classroom. The first activity the teacher had the students do was an "invention in a bag." In this activity the teacher gave her students a baggie filled with four toothpicks, a plastic fork, two post-it notes, two paper clips, a rubber band, and a napkin. The students worked in pairs for 30 min to then invent something using ten of the items given to them. I thought this was a great activity because it had the students working together and being very creative. After they had made their invention, the students wrote a short paragraph about the invention and then presented it to the class. This activity involved creativity, reading, writing, and presenting. It was also a girl's birthday in our class today. Her mom came in and bought snacks for everyone. The teacher then let the girl choose what the class would do for the next ten minutes and they decided on free time. The students tried on dress-up clothes, read, did homework, and played on instruments. I thought this was a great time and it was fun to just mingle with the students. We switched classes at the end and learned that the other class was working on a short story assignment in the computer lab. I was very happy that things in my classroom had finally changed a bit! I am excited to see what next week brings!

In E339 today we talked about non-fiction books and what makes them non-fiction. I thought this was an interesting activity because there is such a large variety of non-fiction books. We also got our assignment for the Multi-Genre Research Paper. I am excited about this project because I am free to do the project on anything I want! I love having the freedom to choose my topic because this way I will be doing research on something I actually am interested in! This will be something to keep in mind when I am assigning research for my own students.