Project Presentation Preparation

This week the class got a new student! Many of the students already knew him so he was able to transition, socially, pretty quickly. I asked what he was going to do about senior project, since where he was before did not do senior project. He is required to complete half of everything and has an extended due date. So far, he has completed most of the early requirements including the topic, an idea who his mentor will be, and the start of his research. 

Speaking of senior projects, the rest of the class is required to set up a day and time for their practice presentations. Their cooperating teacher felt it necessary that each student practiced their presentations at least once. Most of their practice times occur after our lesson too, so, hopefully our lesson goes well and assists them with creating their presentations. Most of our lesson is about digital media, however, I think the overall idea that we want to teach students is that they have a large amount of tools at their disposal.

In addition to our lesson, their teacher also wants to discuss attire, links and learning stretches, delivery and vocabulary.

The next day, we were around to see their morning announcements. I love that their announcements is on a television because there is so much you can do with that. They showed the trailer for Catching Fire, you can see the students doing the announcements, and they can visually display times for any upcoming events. Amanda and I also found out that in addition to prom they have a class trip at the end of the year. After working hard on their senior projects, I think they deserve the trip. It sounds like fun and teachers even enjoy it.

A lot of our time was preparing for our lessons. However, we always are willing to assist students. We went over presentation ideas with a student who was wondering about her own. I realized we may not be able to conduct our lesson to the other class, which saddens me a little. However, since most of our presentation is online, our teacher can reference and utilize with her other class. I’m excited too because I love teaching others about stuff like this. I love YouTube and think it’s a great tool. I am glad they’re lifting the YouTube ban for their senior projects.

April 7

Today we observed two of the senior skills classes. Today was very busy with students fixing their senior project binders and making any last minute changes. Today, we did not bother any seniors due to the high energy and the scramble to get things done. Their binders for senior project are due tomorrow.

 I noticed that a lot of students were mentioning missing letters from their mentors. This was also a reoccurring problem when I was in high school finishing senior project as well. I wonder what could be done to remedy this?

We are planning ahead of time to see another teacher’s class as well, for, as our cooperating teacher claims, seeing other teachers in action and seeing various classrooms is only going to prepare us better when we enter student teaching and, eventually, have our own classrooms.

We then moved to her college prep senior class. Today they began watching the movie for the text they were reading Speak. Due to senior project, they were unable to finish the book; however, there was brief discussion before the movie to help students briefly talk about what they read and what happened during the end of the book. Apparently, the book and movie have different endings.

They have a worksheet to fill out after they watch the movie which will be their first grade for fourth quarter. They will be focusing on the strengths of the character and build connections from their own lives when addressing the questions on the worksheet.

We also discussed what we are planning to do for our lessons next week. I am pretty confident. This means I am going to have to familiarize myself with Vine. I am pretty excited. As our cooperating teacher states, “The first two minutes of your 15 minute presentation are the most important” so I am glad Amanda and I are here to get them started.