Week Five (Which Is Kind Of Week One)

 I had quite the hectic week. To start, I got moved into a new school with not one, but two new mentor teachers. Well, technically I have one, but the mentor I was assigned only teaches first period on purple days, so she managed to get me set up with another ELA9 teacher on white days. 

The first day being Halloween definitely added an interesting vibe to the class. Instead of a normal bellwork, my mentor based the beginning of class work off of Edgar Allan Poe's death. As a refresher on inferences, she supplied students with three theories about how the author died and then asked them to (with evidence), write their own view of what happened. It was actually really interesting. She modeled it for them, then actually called me up to read. I noticed, too, that in addition to having the work up on the board and on Schoology, she also provided paper copies for certain students. 

Tuesday was a white day, so I was meant to go to my second mentor's room, but he had the day off and asked me not to come in so that he could be there for my first day around his students. My purple day mentor had also conveniently scheduled bloodwork for that Tuesday, so with neither mentor in, I spent the morning looking over the curriculum map I'd been given day one. 

Wednesday was actually a work day. The students were given cards that had their missing or not proficient assignments listed and were told to make up or redo that work so they would all have passing grades before the midterm. Again, if students had missing Schoology assignments, they were given the option to complete them on paper. 

Thursday was my first day with my other mentor and his class was starting a short story. He had an audiobook playing while they flipped through it and he paused every other minute to ask comprehension questions and helped students know what to put in their notes. He used a lot of discussion, which the class seemed to respond to. 

Conversely, on Friday, my main mentor had a hybrid lecture/discussion class about tone and mood. It started as mostly lecture with some questions thrown in, but then transitioned into group discussion. After she felt students had a grasp on the differences between tone and mood, she had them complete a worksheet that asked students to decide whether words were positive or negative based on connotation. After the class discussed their answers, the rest of the class was spent working

In short, the differentiation I saw came from both classrooms. Whether it's providing audiobooks for auditory learners or paper copies for kids with better performance on paper, both teachers worked to include all their students at once. 

Twice during the week, my purple day mentor sent a kid to the principal because of disruptions he was causing in class. After he was gone, the class actually responded pretty well and got back on track. While classroom management is its own beast, it seemed like this also contributed to overall class comfort and participation.