"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge." - Albert Einstein

Week 11:

Monday 11/4/13

Today was my final day teaching at Bishop Dunn. Our lesson today was a cooperative lesson on the Declaration of Independence. We were back in the regular classroom today. The lesson started off by describing the 5 parts of the Declaration: 1) the introduction, 2) the preamble, 3) the indictment, 4) the denunciation, and 5) the conclusion. We also described to the students the cooperative learning style by talking about PIGS. Some vocabulary words we went over were:rights, values, responsibility and freedom. After that, we split the class into 5 groups. Each group was assigned a different part of the Declaration to create. The students were creating a declaration to declare freedom from their parents. My group and I worked on the introduction. When very group was done, the students read their part of the declaration to the class. This was definitely a fun activity to do and the students definitely loved it. At the end, the students were given an evaluation sheet to evaluate how the other group members did. We also collected the declarations so we could put them all together and hand them out to the students at out next visit.
I think we taught our best during this lesson. We weren't as nervous and we were used to the students by now so it made it much easier to just relax, and teach. Also, this was such a fun lesson to teach. I think I was just as excited if not more excited than the students to create our own declaration!

Here are the links to:
Lesson Plan
Presentation
Declaration
Evaluation Sheet

Wednesday 11/6/13

It's amazing. Just like that, our fieldwork experience is over. Today was our last day in Mrs. Benfer's class. Instead of splitting everyone into groups, the whole fourth grade class met in the computer lab along with every group of teachers. In the start of the class, each group asked the students a few questions about what they learned just to jog their memory a bit. After that, the students all took a post-assessment test. We are all so lucky that not only Mrs. Benfer, but that Bishop Dunn allows us to come into their school and get some fieldwork experience. I learned so much from this experience. Before now, I had only worked in small groups with students. This was my first time teaching to a whole class, and it is definitely different than just with a few students. At the end of the class, when all of the students had finished their post-assessment test, the teachers all stood in the front of the classroom and we thanked all of the students for letting us come in on their classroom and for not only letting us teach them, but for all that they taught us. We also made certificates for all of the students congratulating them on their jobs well done! I'm sad the fieldwork experience is over but I am so thankful for all that I learned!