Day Two

Today was a little bit of a rollercoaster. My fourth hour went very well, but my fifth hour was a bit of a challenge. We did the "fishbowl" activity in both classes. In 4th hour, the kids really took to it and stayed on task. They completely bought into it and were extremely engaged. Fifth hour wasn't willing to keep on topic or stay within the parameters of the activity. So, with that having been said, here are the best and worst moments of my day:

WORST MOMENT: Because my 5th hour is extremely loud and doesn't like to listen to direction, I made a comment about how I think some of them might need to get their hearing checked. I then gave directions for a freewrite (meaning: when they're done writing on the given prompt, they must continue writing about anything and everything... just keep writing). When I looked through them at the end of the day, I noticed that a girl took offense to the comment I made about checking their hearing. Apparently one of her good friends is hard of hearing and she thought I was making fun of people with a disability. That is not at all what I meant, and it was a bit of a shock to me that she took it so seriously. Lesson learned, though. I need to be more specific and direct about asking them to be quiet. Not making light of their lack of focus might help me in the long-run anyway.

BEST MOMENT: My best moment today was when my fourth hour students were participating in the activity. The students who weren't speaking were listening intently, the students who were speaking were taking turns and addressing one another's points respectfully, they were all smiling and seemed to understand what was going on. Tomorrow, I'm going to have a quick discussion just to make sure they're making the connection between the activity and the general ideas of context, controvery, and audience, but I think they're getting it! If I were to use their participation in this activity as an informal assessment, I'd say they're definitely understanding the concepts! Yea!