My Seventh Day

On March 15th, I was back in Ms. Johns's classroom. When I first arrived to Mr. Jones's class, he informed me they were trying out a new online system, so there wasn't much I could do. In Ms. Johns's class, they were working on an Ancient Greek handout. The handout was based on a website they had to navigate. Instead of helping one student, I walked around the classroom and checked on students' progress. Eventually, Ms. Johns put me with a student who was spending most of the time on his phone. To help him stay focused, I did the worksheet with him and helped him find the answers. It was actually pretty hard because the website was confusing and there were lots of different pages.

I think doing "scavenger hunts" on websites is a cool idea, but if the website is too confusing, and the questions aren't in order of how they appear, it can take longer. However, the students do have to read more carefully. For some questions, the student I worked with had to reread a page up to three times before he found the answer. In this time period, I think technology should play a big part in the classroom. While students aren't in school to be entertained, lessons should still be engaging, especially because many don't want to be there in the first place.

My Sixth Day

On March 1st, I was in Mr. Jones's class. Most students were working on a podcast assignment. They had to summarize the first six episodes, and then look up and define vocabulary words. He kept repeating he wanted students to do the assignment in that order: summarize and then vocabulary.

I worked with two students that day. For the first student, Mr. Jones told me he had a hard time staying on task, so I needed to monitor him while he worked on the assignment. As soon as I sat down, he got to work, but started the vocabulary section. I reminded him what the instructions were, but he wanted to go ahead and do the vocabulary since it was faster. In previous posts, I mentioned it felt weird being an authority, but I knew I had to this time. I explained that Mr. Jones said he wanted it done in a particular order multiple times and explain why that might be. By first listening to the podcast, then filling out the vocabulary, you could hear the words being used and understand the context. He did it in the correct order after I explained this, and finished pretty quickly.

The second student I worked with also had a hard time completing the assignment. He seemed mad about having to do it, so I asked what the podcast was about and got him chatting to lighten the mood. While he reread each episode's summary, he commented about what he thought about different characters and plots. He didn't need any help with the assignment itself. Like the first student, he just needed a little extra motivation.


After he finished, Mr. Jones tried to find someone else I could help, but no one did. Instead of waiting around, he let me leave.

This visit was pretty laid back. I mainly just made sure students were on task. I've noticed many assignments are easy to do, it's just hard to motivate the students to do them.