Pre-internship Weblog

In first class this morning, the students were quietly writing a math test. This gave my co-op and my partner the time to review what was going to take place over the next few days. It also gave us the chance to ask any questions about the school and students, as well as the teachers practices in the class. As I began recording things, I couldn’t come up with a logical way for me to format my data so I can find it quickly and efficiently. This is something I will have to work on for tomorrow; a way to organize my jot notes.For second class the two students in accounting were completing a test. This gave my partner and I the opportunity to walk around the school a bit. We went into the library and had a nice talk with the librarian. She explained that most of their books were donated items from libraries throughout the city. When asked about content, she explained it is mandatory that no books contain boy/girl relationships except for non-fiction material and that it be culturally appropriate. The biggest challenge for this library is how to attain the books to fill it and still encourage the students to read. Just like all kids, the books that are popular to modern society are popular amongst these students as well.

Third class was in the computer lab; Computer Literature 9 and Information Processing 10. The grade 9 students were beginning a unit on powerpoint. There job was to create a project using powerpoint about themselves. For the grade 10 students, they were beginning a unit on Excel. Given a handout on spreadsheets, the students were to follow the directions listed in order to become more familiar with the general tasks and layout of excel.

During the prep periods, we were able to do some marking for our co-op. Marking these tests gave me the chance to see what items she included on her test layout which may be beneficial to me in my own class. She said something she had started some time ago was a test template. On this template it contained a space for the students name, a text box were the teacher can record the mark and a tally spot at the bottom of the page for quick marking. I will definitely make use of this idea in my class.

Psychology 20, after lunch, was pretty straight forward. The two students in attendance were working on their action plan which would take place this week.

For the final class, students went to the computer lab to work on a webquest. Being able to walk around the classroom and speak to the students casually gave me the opportunity to get to know a little bit more about the students I will be teaching. One student in particular stuck out for me. He seemed engaged in a conversation I was having with the co-op about a cool program. He seemed eager to learn about technology and the use of the interesting tools “out there” if you just look for them. I will have to remember to “pick his brain” on programs he uses on a regular basis.

All in all, today was great. I am not sure if I will be able to remember all of the students names or not, but this will be my professional target for tomorrow. I struggle with remembering names generally, so I must be focused and get to know the students in order to help me remember their names.