Emily Dickinson

A version of part of this quote,  "We never know how good we are until we are called to rise," was on a silver dove ornament my CT gave me for Christmas. I think this pretty much explains my entire student teaching.

We never know how high we are
Till we are asked to rise
And then if we are true to plan
Our statures touch the skies -- 

The Heroism we recite
Would be a normal thing
Did not ourselves the Cubits warp
For fear to be a King --

~Emily Dickinson 

Symbolism Lesson

My supervisor came and observed me during a reading lesson I taught a few days ago.  I was a little nervous because she was observing my rowdy class, but the lesson went great.  It focused on symbolism in The Giver.  Whenever I create my own lessons,  there is always some kind of anticipatory activity, related to the lesson, implemented at the very beginning of class to capture students' attention.  Well, at the beginning of class, I showed the hilarious clip located above.  The students loved this clip!  Some asked me to play it again—which I didn’t, but I definitely had their attention :).  After this I gave a quick overview of symbols and asked students to tell me what money, the American flag, and the color yellow symbolize.  Then I explained they would be working in groups to identify and determine the meaning of a symbol from a passage in The Giver.  Each student in the group was given a specific task.  One student had to read aloud their passage.  One student had to write down what their symbol was and what it represented.  One student had to go over to a pile of photos I had printed out and find a picture of their symbol.  Another student taped the picture of the symbol to the board and wrote what the symbol was and what it represented.  The last student came up and presented his or her group’s findings to the class.  Overall, it went well, and the intervention specialist asked for the clip I used at the beginning of class!

Timeline of Life

For one of my education classes at Wright state, I had to plan a lesson and film myself teaching it in my placement.  Our 7th graders are about to write memoirs right now so I decided to plan a lesson to help them brainstorm ideas for their papers.

I began class by drawing two columns on the board:  positive events & negative events.  Then I asked students to raise their hands and volunteer some answers.  After this I explained that they were going to track at least 10 events in the lives, positive and/or negative.  In their notebooks, I had students draw five columns with the following headings:  event, time/age, positive/negative, image, description.  After modeling how to fill out these columns, students began to fill out these columns for ten events.  Once they were done, I showed them how to take their information and create a timeline of the events.  I had created one over our multiple snow days to share :)

The students really seemed to enjoy reminiscing.  While grading these, I really learned more about each of my students.  My cooperating teacher and I decorated the room with all of their creations.  The picture above is part of an actual timeline one of my students created.

Utopian Society

Right now we are having our students read The Giver by Lois Lowry.  This book takes place in a dystopian future/society where the main character Jonas lives in a world that is completely structured and controlled by the Elders, AKA the ones in charge.  The way everyone dresses, what everyone talks about, and what everyone does for a living is determined by these elders.  Before we had our students begin reading the book, we assigned a project where they had to form their own perfect societies in groups.  Each day of the week we introduced different elements they had to include in their society:  name, seal, itinerary, government, business letter, advertisement, map, and laws/rules.  The students really enjoyed this project.  Each group came up with what they valued the most and what they would do to make the world literally perfect.  At the end of about two weeks, each group presented their society to the class.  I realize that seventh graders need a lot of lessons on time management.  They still expect the teacher to tell them when to do everything instead of taking responsibility and managing their own time.  Overall, this project really allowed students to begin thinking about the theme of control and how much is a good thing.  For those of you who have not read The Giver, go read it.  Every time I read it I gain something new and enjoy it every time.