Thursday, November 6, 2008

Week 12: Oct 30th to Nov 5th

We made it through Halloween successfully and that was a tremendous relief. I felt like I had a wonderful lesson and the kids really became involved. We read a scary story together and I modeled how to do a found poem from a story. Then they all created their own found poems from different stories. When they were finished, the kids got up and read their poems in front of the class. We turned out the lights, turned on some scary ‘haunted house’ background noises, and the kids came up to the front of the room one at a time and read their poem with a flashlight held under their chin to give it a “spookier” effect. Then they voted and the person with the scariest story won a candy bar from my special stash. It went extremely well and the kids were so focused on creating the scariest poem that noise and class control wasn’t an issue all day. Even as they were sharing their poetry, the kids were all very intent on being good judges and listened carefully to each other while still having fun.

As you know, last weekend I spent eighteen hours putting together a poetry packet of worksheets to guide my class through the next two weeks of the poetry unit we are doing. I am ridiculously proud of my worksheets and I’m very excited that it is working out so well. The kids have all their important worksheets in one place now, and I also have had an easy time planning the rest of this week’s lessons. Last night I was home by six o’clock and tonight I’m going to be home by about five-thirty. Giving up that much of my time on the weekend has been worth it to be able to go home at a descent hour. I am bringing home some papers to grade, but I don’t anticipate it being too difficult to wrap up a few things at home tonight and then go to bed early. I hope to put in some hours this weekend getting the kid’s project rubrics outlined for their portfolios and the poem they will memorize. When we come back from Thanksgiving break I’m going to begin teaching my next reading unit—Out of the Dust. Hopefully I can get that unit outlined long before it is time to teach it as well. I have a lot of helpful materials that Cecily gave me from the last intern’s work, so that will give me something to go off of. Nothing is harder in teaching than starting from scratch, and I’m so relieved that I have the work of others to look at and borrow from. I hope that I leave enough stuff behind to really help some of the next interns as well.

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