Reflections on Placement

My student teaching placement thus far has invlolved my working with 2 sections of a 7^th grade ELA course. This 7th grade course's materials include Catching Up on Conventions by Chantal Francois and Elisa Zonana, American Born Chinese by Gene Yang, Dreams and Nightmares: Sueños y Pesadillas by Liliana Velásquez, and Girl Rising (series of short films).

The class revolves around the overarching theme of Transformation – all texts, lessons, and activities are implemented with the goal of understanding transformation. Goals include recognizing the forces that act in transformation, identifying “Big Ideas” in texts that lead to character transformation (i.e. courage, determination, trust), and relating personal experiences of transformation to class material. This curriculum is coherent and cohesive; each lesson builds upon the last and relies on skills practiced in prior lessons to develop stronger reading, writing, and discussion skills. For each unit, the class reads one novel together. The students are placed into “journal groups” at the start of each unit and work with those same groups throughout the unit. Each group is assigned a “big idea” and works together each day to identify their big ideas in the text and relate them to the overarching theme of transformation. By the end of the unit, students compile slideshows about their ideas in the text and present them to their classmates in an interactive manner. This way, all students are exposed to all big ideas, and they get the opportunity to think through each element in terms of fictional and personal transformation.

This format has become familiar to students, so they have grown greatly in their discussion and presentation skills. I appreciate that the curriculum is built upon gradual development of skills using diverse texts. This exposes students to range of genres and forms of language and teaches them that the skills they develop in English class can be utilized consistently through contexts. I would add some variety between units to prevent students from falling into a rut of repetitive work. I personally grow disengaged from my learning when it follows an unchanging form for too long, and I would not want these students to lose their interest in classwork because it is too familiar. I may slightly adjust journal group expectations each unit to be more challenging or thought-provoking. Discussion questions would be increasingly more abstract; students would learn the skills necessary to answer finite questions based directly on readings and gradually transition into providing thoughtful responses to abstract questions on theme and transformation. As questions gradually become more challenging, the hope is that students will have developed the writing and discussion skills to work through the prompts together. Additionally, because of the cultural relevance of most of the class material, I would include reflection assignments in the curriculum to "have students regularly reflect on what they are learning and how it will help them...in life" (Tomlinson and McTighe, 2006, 88). The material in this curriculum is chosen intentionally to expose students to different cultures, social forces, and ideologies; including critical reflection on our discussions of such material would strengthen students' confidence in their ability to address important but difficult subjects as they undergo their own transformations.