Day One Tuesday, March 14th - 7 hours
Today in Mrs. Greens class there was a substitute teacher Mr. Dubay. It was neat to see how the students behaved differently and to get an idea of how different teachers structure the day. Mr Dubay handles the kids well and uses incentives like being able to work with friends and in the hall to be a way for kids to behave.
We also used the media room, basically a computer lab. This was an awesome experience. Seeing how the students learn math through playing games. It was interesting how some of the students who have some trouble concentrating on paper worksheets blasted through the game versions. It was also neat to see how the games are structured in a way that's fun for the students but also a learning experience.
Wednesday and Thursday March 15th and 16th - 14 hours
These days were spent like most others with normal lessons and Stephanie was back. It was interesting how much more well behaved and under control the students were. At the end of the day on Thursday I took the last 20 minutes to get the students started thinking about Symbolism. I talked about how the Roman, Greek, Egyptian and Chinese civilizations used symbolism to describe themselves to others. I then asked each of the students to think about 3 words that they think describe them and to have those words ready for the next class.
Friday March 17th - 7 hours - Project Day
The big project day is finally here. All the planning and thinking is over and it time to see if the kids will enjoy it and hopefully learn something from it. Over all it went really well. There was a couple times were everyone got a little behind and if I was to do it over I would have explained the entire project at the beginning. The students first used scratch paper to rough out their ideas for each of their words. Then I gave them a square piece of bristol paper and a template to cut their shield shape from. After having their roughs and shield shapes cut out the students worked on getting their ideas on to the shieldand to make sure they were covering the whole shield. Once their designs were done in pencil, I gave them each an illustration marker and they made their designs permanent. There was some students who finished faster than others so i had them add extra decorations to their shields. Overall the students really like the project. They were all really pumped when I told they they get to keep the Illustration pens.
There are many things I would do differently but overall i was happy with the outcomes and will miss the kids in that class.