Getting Oriented....

Today was the orientation at the Elementary School.

This school actually looks like a school. When I entered the school I saw that the hallway walls had very kid-friendly murals painted on them. The corners of the walls (where two halls crossed) had painted on street signs. This made me wonder if this school does what I did in elementary school, which was write letters to other students in the school using street names for the hallways. Well, even if they don't it was very cute.

We arrived at 10 at the middle school and headed to the media center. The media center is rather small, but so is the school.

We met with the VP and she told us an overview of the school. The VP did tell us that they school has iTouch carts that teachers can check out, two iPad classrooms, and an iPad cart that teachers can check out. perked up when I heard about the iPads because I am doing my research paper on iPads.

Observation Day 4

Today is my 4th and final day of observation at the Middle School. The following is what I observed:

Ms. L - Social Studies 7th Grade
Technology:
After the students took a quiz, Ms. L went over the answers using the document camera. The document camera is not the best in the world, but it did what she needed it to do. Ms. L projected the image of her worksheet/quiz and wrote in the correct answers. The last 10 minutes of class the students watch a video on the Korean War that is streaming from Netflix.

Activities:
The class took a quiz. After the quiz Ms. L went over the quiz using the document camera. After the quiz, students work on packets from the book. While the students are doing their packets. Ms. L is handing back classroom work from the day before. The students are allowed to work in groups on the packets. The last 10 minutes of class are for a documentary video on the Korean War.

General Observations:
Every student in the school gets breakfast provided to them by the school for free because of a grant. So, the first ten minutes of each day is devoted to eating breakfast.

Ms. M (Student Teacher) - Advanced Science 7th Grade
Technology:
The students come in and do "bellwork" from the smartboard. The lecture is on the smartboard as well. Ms. M uses the document camera to show questions that the students turned in from the class before. These questions are just slips of paper where the groups wrote down a question that they were confused or needed more clarification on.

Activities:
Today was just a typical lecture day.

General Observations:
The students are grouped into tables. Tables earn points, and the table with the most points from the day before gets to sit on a couch that is positioned in front of the smartboard. If the table decides to sit in front of the smartboard it costs them points from their total.

Mr. S - Science 8th Grade
Technology:
Mr. S uses different types of technology very seamlessly. He flows from the document camera, back to the smartboard, to videos very naturally. Mr. S uses real-life examples during his lecture, which is why he switches back and forth from his PowerPoint to his document camera. Mr. S also used a streaming YouTube video that went along with his lecture. The video was a precursor for the lab that they were going to do the next day.

Activities:
The students did "bellwork" and a lecture on the human eye.

General Observations:
Mr. S made the lesson fun. He entertained the students with personal anecdotes which made the students more interested in what he was discussing.