Residency- Barton Open School- 3 Hours
The students are now reading The Pearl. They were given related discussion questions to ponder. The first one the teacher asked, to the class as a whole, was what they would do if they suddenly had more money than they could imagine. I noticed many of the students were saying the same types of things such as houses, cars, vacations, helping their families, charity; but there were also occasionally answers that were very different than all the rest, such as going to Mars. I also noticed that the students seemed to be bouncing ideas off of each other. Specifically, when one student had an idea that hadn't been said yet, the other students seemed to nod in agreement.
After reading a section as a class, the students were given more topic questions more specific to the content of the book. These questions were discussed in small groups, and personal answers were written down in their notebooks.
During the teacher's prep period, we planned the lesson I will be teaching.