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The Monsters Came to Visit Perry Middle School
What is more fearful to a student learning to become a teacher than preparing for an exam or writing a paper? Facing a roomful of 12 and 14 year old adolescents and hoping you have enough material prepared to keep them busy and motivated. How does a student teacher, fresh and inexperienced in the art of “student attention capture,” accomplish this task? By practice, regrouping, and more practice.
From day one I found out that what I may have thought was a set of well written lesson plans were daily in need of revising. This was not a bad experience; it taught me to think and be creative at a moment’s notice. I found my most valuable resource throughout this ten day process of teaching to be my cooperating teacher. Amy had more ideas and guidance for me in about how to control class noise, attention, and lesson refinement than I could have imagined. The most important thing I learned from her during these two short weeks was how to give directions. First, you write them on the board. Second, you ask the students if they have read the instructions on the board. One of them will volunteer to read them out loud to the entire class. Third, you ask if they understood the instructions and summarize them to the class. Even then, there were those students who just were not paying attention. More often than not, they were in my first period class. My second period class generally had the instructions written down by the time I would finish summarizing them. These are both general 7th grade English classes. I did not teach the two sections of advanced 7th grade English during my ten days. My lesson plans were simple and straight forward: Sustained Silent Reading (such as my cooperating teacher modeled for me and her students), a few basic announcements, then it was time to dig into the reading of the script. I found that both classes enjoyed dividing up the parts and switching off every other day as to who was reading which part. According to my student’s post-assessments they enjoyed learning about science fiction and working with a script full of camera and stage directions. Many of the students wrote that they would like to study television production in college.
As I watched the DVD of my second period class, many items that I need to change became very obvious to me. Keep my hand out of my sweater pocket: this was due to nervousness. Lose weight: so, this is more personal, yet I am setting an example before these students and being obese is not a good example. I need to stand up: Miss Strauch, my university supervisor, brought this to my attention when she observed me teaching. I am too short to be sitting down. I was following the example of my mentor teacher, but I need to remember that Amy is six inches taller than I am. I need to move around more: staying in one place is not good for interaction with the students. Yes, I had good interaction, but moving around more would be better. The good points that I noticed were: the class was respectful and engaged with the reading and vocabulary lesson, I had a good discussion going with this group about “monsters,” the noise level was good, and the higher level thinking was happening. After I passed out the first vocabulary sheet, Amy taught me to ask the class what they thought was the definition to the word or term before I gave them the answer. I used this technique during week two and the student’s grades on their finals increased in the vocabulary section of the test.
I spent numerous hours writing multiple choice quizzes, a final exam, vocabulary sheets with pronunciation guides, a pre-assessment, a post-assessment, and games. I chose to make the quizzes and final multiple-choice for the ease of grading. I decided it would be wiser to put the bulk of my work up front instead of during the grading process.
My most frustrating experience during these two weeks was with the games I planned for the classes. My first game was a form of Concentration that I placed upon the board as a review for quiz one. I took the vocabulary words from sheet one, terms covered from the script through page eight, and pieces of character’s dialogue through page eight as my 36 card matching game. Period one was so loud, it was difficult to keep the noise level down. I read the class my rules before we began the game. After class was dismissed, Amy suggested to me to put the rules on the board for the second class and to add a rule to deduct points if the students were warned to be quiet and did not heed the warning. These two little tips made the running of the game in class two so much better. I had time at the end of that class to ask the students (the same students in my video) for suggestions to improve the game the next time we played it for review. Dez suggested adding the element of chance, which I did for the second version of the game. The day Miss Strauch came to observe me, I attempted to play “Prisoner’s Dilemma” with the students. I put the rules of the game on the board and handed them out on a sheet to the students along with the pictures of the villain and hero and a piece of paper for scoring. I had to re-explain the game to several pairs in class one. They just did not catch the concept. In class two, most of the students caught the concept and the scoring of the game fine. Amy mentioned to me the following day that many of the students in class one are known by the 7th grade faculty as more immature and less focused than their peers in class two. The students in class one often come unprepared without a pencil or pen, their SSR book, or text book (script). Miss Strauch observed my teaching during this day of “Prisoner’s Dilemma” and made some suggestions to me to help it run more smoothly in the future. Her suggestions were that I need to stay in control of the game by calling out when the students flip the pictures, and then tell them to write down their scores and repeat that process. That way the confusion is kept to a minimum and I can bring them back together to discuss the dynamic of what had just occurred between the gaming partners. Yes, the game applied to the lesson, “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street,” but I still wonder if it was over their heads. My final game was “Meeting the Aliens,” which was an idea I took from one of the handouts I received from SEED class. I had the cards ready for the groups to pull to figure out who their alien was and what earth invention they were going to attempt to teach their new friend about. After I explained to process again to each small group, they did very well at figuring out how to instruct their alien per the explanation given by their spokesperson. Amy’s suggestion to help improve the process for class two was that one person should be the note taker, one person comes up with definition of the invention, and the last person in the group is responsible to present their alien and earth invention definition to the class. We were not able to play the game in class two because the school nurse took two-thirds of my class out during the time I had set aside to re-administer hearing tests.
Our final day was pleasant and fun. My cooperating teacher, Amy, was not able to be with me because her daughter was ill. She had a wonderful substitute teacher assigned to be with me, Mrs. Wagner. Every other Friday is library day. The students are taken down to the library for 15 minutes of class to renew out check-out a new book for SSR during class. We first went to the library, returned and took the final, and then we watched the black and white original version of “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street.” Many of the students in both classes pulled out their scripts and followed along. Now, that was a teaching moment that caught me by surprise. That is what I would have done.
I learned the wisdom of over-planning during those two short weeks. I was exhausted, yet exhilarated to observe children with behavioral problems quiet down and actively participate during the reading of the script in class. Dante has an Individualized Education Plan for behavior. Joey enjoys making irritating high pitched baby noises. During week two, I don’t think I heard any coming from him during class. Ashley Anderson is a foster child on an Individualized Education Plan. She reads well out loud and enjoyed participating. During week one, I took a note away from her that she was writing during class. I gave it back to her at the end of class. I did not have that problem with her during week two. Now, my next challenge is to improve my gaming technique.