In my last few visits to Ms. Donahue’s classroom, I have gotten to participate in the class on a greater and greater scale each time. On my second visit, the extent of my participation was acting as a scribe for the class and writing on the board. However, in my third visit, I actually began to interact in a more meaningful manner with the students. During my third visit, I helped the students in Ms. Donahue’s class create their posters to present with based on the in class project that they have been working on. In doing so, I helped guide the students in the right direction, making suggestions for vital parts of the posters, such as how to represent data in graphs, and overall poster design. In addition, I helped check for grammar and spelling errors on the posters as well. On my fourth visit, we went on a field trip to an environmental conference. During the trip, I acted as a chaperone, making sure that the students behaved well. In addition, I also acted as a small group facilitator, as the students had the opportunity to present to other schools about the project that they had just finished. This was one of the best parts of the class so far, as I had the opportunity to see the finished product of the student’s work, that I helped shape and guide. In addition to this, the conference also featured several breakout sessions that focused on various topics, as well as a tour of the community college.

Based off of my observations in the classroom, as well as what I have learned in class, I have been able to come up with a learning activity that is based in our final lesson goal of a debate. This lesson would require students to present in front of the class on an article about plastic waste that the class would read beforehand. In addition to giving a short presentation (5 minutes) in front of the class, the other students who are listening will have to ask questions regarding the presentation. This will encourage active listening during both the presentation and the debate. Additionally, by requiring students to ask questions based on the presentations, this activity would encourage critical thinking within the students, as they must come up with a response to what they just heard in the presentation, similar to how the students would have to respond to each other during the debate. The presence of a time requirement for the presentations would also teach the students to adhere to a given set time limit. This activity would focus on creating confidence in each of the students in their ability to speak before a large group, as this has been a problem that I have noticed in some of Ms. Donahue’s classes. Additionally, this would also be an opportunity to work on proper grammar and argument structure with the students, as both the teacher and class get to know the student’s speaking style and ability.