Today I will be teaching a language arts lesson in my classroom. I observed all day yesterday and helped my teacher out with various aspects of her lessons. I will have an hour and fifteen minutes to teach the language arts which includes both a reading and writing component. My students will read "The Frog Who Wanted To Be Tall" by alternating readers throughout the class. Prior to this we will take a look at the pictures in the story and try to anticipate actions and the plot through the use of these images. Upon reading the story we will go over vocabulary words used in the story and review with answering comprehension questions. The writing aspect of my lesson includes a review of what adjectives are and how to use them. We will explore our story and the use of adjectives by looking at three questions that require the students to go back in the text and locate adjectives and how they are being used in the fiction text. We will then record in their language arts note books the definition of an adjective. The last part of the lesson will require the students to draw a scene from the story and write two sentences using adjectives discussed to describe the characters in this fiction text.
I am excited to see how the students handle this lesson. After observing yesterday and looking at my teachers plans and what she ended up having time to do I noticed that not all the activities she planned for made it into the time frame for that given subject. This reminded me of my internship back home and one of the joys of teaching: you never know what questions will come your way or how the students will specifically handle a text. Sometimes if you get through half of what you planned for a difficult concept in a given subject you are thrilled and sometimes you get to the end of your lesson and make use of that extension activity you had planned. I am anxious and excited to teach today.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to look at the Belizean Standards for education. I noticed a lot of similarities among the curriculum as a whole. The presentation of the standards is different from that of the NCSCOS but the general idea of their being an objective to meet, form of assessment, and over all goal of mastery of a concept is similar.
This afternoon we will meet between 5:00 pm and 5:30 to ride our bikes North as a group and go across the bridge to eat dinner. I am looking forward to this activity this evening. After school I am going to come home and put my stuff down and then go to SAGA Humane Society to walk a dog there. We had the chance to do this last Saturday and I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity. Although it is very hot here and the dogs are not interested in running around forever, they are very energetic and appreciative of the break from their kennel and opportunity to exercise and sniff!
I will be sure to write about how my lesson went as well as what I observed and experience on Day 2. The local newspaper comes to my school this morning to take a picture of the UNCW interns to post in the paper alongside an article about our experience and purpose here in San Pedro. I am hoping to get a copy of this while I am here!
