In the 100 hours of field experience in which I participated over the two semesters of Methods in English Instruction, I witnessed a wide array of classroom activities and experiences at both the middle school and the high school level. There were some activities that were highly meaningful and others that were nothing more than a waste of the students’ time, but most fell in between these two ends of the spectrum. One of the worst activities I witnessed is an eleventh-grade student leaving a worksheet with the substitute that required the students to find a bunch of quotes on a list, indicate their page number and their meaning with regards to the text. There was also a list of very surface-level questions about the text such as “What color is character X’s dress?” The students found this activity highly tedious, and the reactions ranged from a resigned completion of the worksheet accompanied by expressions of intense boredom to loud complaints to an outright refusal to do the activity. “I don’t get this!” and “This is stupid!” were the most common sentences of the day. The teacher could have improved the activity by asking higher-level study questions. She could also have helped the students to better understand the more difficult language in the text by having the students work to translate it into modern English as they themselves might say the dialogue. This is a creative way to use the text, allows the students to manipulate the lines on their own terms, and most importantly requires them to look more closely at the words to gain understanding. They might also have used the quotes in a higher-level, more creative way. They could have written an abridged narrative of the play in which they must use at least five of the twenty quotes, for instance. The prime mistake in giving the assignment she did to her students is that it contains the negative subliminal message that she does not believe her students capable of performing a higher-level activity sought by INTASC Standard 4. Another classroom experience that I found very lacking was one class in which the students took turns reading from the novel for an entire class period, and did this same activity every single day. The fact that the class activity was so monotonous and predictable was exacerbated by the teacher interrupting virtually every single line with wisecracks. In one class, the students only got through two pages of To Kill a Mockingbird in a 42-minute period. There is no difference in motivational strategy, simply reading lines aloud does not induce critical thinking, and he remains oblivious to the students’ annoyed reactions to his overdone jokes, which usually remain the same from day to day. Adding variety- any variety- would ameliorate the students’ learning experience immensely. In his place, I would pay attention to how the students are reacting to the lesson and, if I felt compelled to make jokes, would use them to call the students’ attention to a particularly important incident. I would have the students read at home and devise other activities for the classroom. Conversely, one of the best activities I witnessed was when a teacher had his students perform a scene from the second act of Othello. However, this activity did not include the teacher assigning a few students roles while the rest of the class simply watched as so often happens in the classroom, but they were divided into small groups to decide which lines were necessary to lend meaning to the play as a whole. They also are given the choice of deciding upon movement and staging. Every student participates in this activity and thus sees that they have a strong hand in making their own learning, as is exhorted by both “Attitudes of Effective Teachers” and INTASC Disposition One. He furthermore creates an instructional opportunity for every kind of learner there is. The kinesthetic learners will gain knowledge from performance, those who learn visually can accrue knowledge from watching movement, and the auditory learners will hear what has been decided upon as important. Furthermore, all of the students will gain knowledge from delving into the language to manipulate it.
The field experience provided a valuable insight into the goings-on from the classroom from the point-of-view of one with a very objective standpoint. I was able to study the dynamics between the teacher and students and form conclusions based on observation. I also gained an opportunity to speak to the teachers about their lessons and compare the instructor objectives to what actually transpired when the teachers implemented their lesson plans as an activity.
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