Pre-Block, Adopt-a Class Practicum
It seems important for prospective teachers to have experience with real secondary students as they prepare to teach writing. This project will enable you to collaborate with a practicing teacher in assigning writing, developing criteria for a particular assignment, assisting students during the writing process, and grading the writing. You can expect to be at the school for about five classes in order to complete the practicum.
- After you sign up for a time slot that works into your schedule, meet with those in the same time slot so that you can designate someone in the group to contact the teacher. That person should call the teacher (numbers listed on the sign-up sheet) and arrange for a time to meet. During the meeting (it would be nice if it was before or after that particular class because one of the requirements is to observe the class before you begin to work with it), you should plan an assignment or writing experience for the students in collaboration with the teacher. See the guide for observation below.
- Meet with the teacher to plan an assignment. Some teachers will let you plan the assignment; others may ask you to work off an assignment that they have already designed. Set up criteria for the students in a rubric, so students know what it will take to be successful in the assignment. You will need to work with the teacher as she/he decides what it is important for the students to be working on next. If you can set the criteria in collaboration with the students and the teachers, that would be ideal because they will feel more commitment to meeting them.
- Be present when the assignment is given. Better yet, give the assignment to the students yourselves.
- Be available for at least two sessions so that you can conference with students on their drafts.
- If you see a writing problem that most of the students exhibet, you might want to plan a short lesson that will help the students improve. This most logically comes somewhere between the first and final draft. Plan this lesson with the teacher.
- When the writing is complete, grade the paper on the basis of the criteria that you set up when it was assigned. You will need to talk with the teacher so that you follow her/his grading routine. Another conference with the students as you return their papers would be ideal.
- If you are taking 5922: You may do the Adopt-a-Class project as part of your High School Apprenticeship and link it with Microteaching #3.
While you are doing this practicum, use your journal to note what you are learning and what you would do differently if you had your own class or had a chance to repeat the practicum another time. You should have a journal entry for each time that you go into the classroom. Begin with the observation guide below. At the end of the experience, meet with the others in your group and evaluate the experience. I will be giving you specific guidelines for this evaluation below. If you can include the teacher in this process, all the better. Remember this project qualifies you for an "A," so do this journal and evaluation wholeheartedly.
Graduate Student Options: (1) Do this assignment with the prospective teachers in class in a secondary school. (2) If you are teaching Freshman Composition or are planning to, do the following with a freshman composition class. I know you will be making many assignments, but for one assignment:
- collaborate with the instructor (unless you are the instructor) to establish real audience and purpose for the writing,
- collaborate with the students in establishing criteria for the assignment,
- work with students in idea generation,
- conference with students over a draft and again as you return the papers.
Observation Guide:
When you observe your mentor teacher's class, look for the following things:
- From observing the classroom, the teacher, and the students' interactions with the teacher, what do you think that the teacher's teaching beliefs are? Beliefs about writing and the teaching of writing? Beliefs about assessment?
- What is the motivation level of the students in the class? Why?
- What particular students stand out to you in the class? What will they need to help them be successful in this assignment you will develop?
- What questions are you left with after this class?
Adopt-A-Class Reflection and Analysis
Join with those who were with you in your adopted class. (You may write this up alone if you did the work individually for some reason.) I encourage you to use a tape recorder to record group discussion. Check to be sure that everyone in the group conversation is audible after the first few minutes of taping; it is frustrating not to be able to hear everyone in the group. The background noise in public places makes it hard to hear group conversations, so you should try to find a quiet place to meet together. Graduate students probably had different experiences with this assignment, so relate your different experiences and then talk about the connections between your experiences, trying still to answer the questions below.
- Tell me the story of your experience(s) with giving an assignment, conferencing with students over their work in progress, grading their papers, and conferencing with students on the returned paper. If your experience differed from what was assigned, discuss that. Based on your recollections, narrate the experience. You may have different viewpoints of the same situation or different experiences of the process; discuss.
- Reflect on what happened: your collective reactions or feelings about specific parts, reasons for what happened, your evaluation of what happened. Were their disparities between your plan and what actually happened? Were there instances in which a different decision would have changed the course of what you were doing and why?
- Analyze. Review back over your plans, narrative, and reflections. Actually listen to the tape again. Describe how your knowledge and beliefs about teaching that influenced your plan and its result. Describe how the classroom teacher's knowledge and beliefs had an effect on your plans if you did not have complete autonomy in developing them. If you had the same opportunity on March 1, what would you do differently? If you had your own classroom in the fall, what would you do differently?