During my third participatory classroom visit, the students were tasked with compiling all of their data from their research experiment at the middle school. Specifically, they were working on putting their data onto a poster using two different types of graphs. Mrs. Donahue informed us that the students were having trouble concentrating, which was obvious as soon as we stepped in the class. To help with this, my partner, Brad, and I roamed around the classroom helping the students with their work. My partner and I had a strong leadership role in doing this because the students turned to us for help when they encountered difficulties. Additionally, there was one group of three students that spent the majority of their time talking and joking rather than doing their work. Brad and I stepped in and practically annoyed them to the point where the only way they could get us to leave was to do their work. Overall, this classroom activity exemplified the EL principle Student-Engaged Assessment, because the students were doing their own research and data compilations, and they had to become the leaders of their own learning.

My invented idea for a learning activity for the class is a group presentation on a selected environmental issue. Students will be split into groups of two, and they will then choose an issue such as single use plastics to discuss. This will be an effective activity because they will have to conduct their own research on their selected environmental topic, and they will have to present possible solutions to the class. This activity incorporates the EL principle Collaboration and Competition because students will be working in groups to conduct their research and do their presentations. This activity will also be useful because Mrs. Donahue wants Brad and I to give a brief lesson about public speaking, so they will have to incorporate what we teach them into their presentations.

Being able to instruct our own mini lesson on participation day gave me a lot of insight on what the role of a teacher fully felt like. Instead of just helping students with their own work, Chris and I led a presentation on public speaking. While overall public speaking is an important trait to have, it directly impacted their current science project presentations. To begin, the powerpoint we presented took strategies from chapter 2 “Design and Plan” in order to grasp the attention of the class. This strategy consisted of connecting the project to popular culture and listening to responses. We gave an example of a person exhibiting good public speaking skills and one showing bad skills. By using President Obama’s image, it presented a familiar face that could gain more attention from the students. The goal of this slide was to allow students to note what they saw within the images. This reflection exercise proved the students already had a basic knowledge of good public speaking characteristics. The biggest takeaway that I got from the our presentation was, will students actually implement what they have learned? At the very end of the powerpoint, we chose two students to practice the five focal points given during the presentation. This practice included stating their name and two fun facts. Chris and I were looking for good posture, inflection, confidence, pace, and eye contact. I initially thought of this so students could fully grasp the information we delivered to them. This idea derived from chapter 7 “Engage and Coach” because it is important for teachers to focus on teaching moments. By allowing the students to give their own demonstration of what they learned, it allowed for the class to add corrections. I thought it was important for the class to comment on the volunteer’s performance not just us as teachers.

Moving from our participation session into planning our own learning activity, the concept I wanted to focus on was the usage of good public speaking. I think it is important to build off of the foundation Chris and I have already built. Moreover, there was a feeling within me that if the student didn’t practice the points we gave them, they wouldn’t adopt them. Because of this, we chose our two disciplinary domains to be English and Science. This also made sense because they were already giving presentations for their current science project, so it will only be beneficial to them. The next step in the process was to brainstorm ideas that would allow students to gain knowledge from a project-based learning assignment, but also enjoy what they were doing. Since the class was already learning about the different kingdoms, I thought it would be interesting to continue on one of them. Reflecting back to my sixth grade science class, I remember we did a project on insects and this fix within the animal kingdom. To ensure some authenticity from chapter 2 ‘Design and Plan” I wanted to make sure students conducted a good amount of research to add onto the English portion of the project. By allowing students to capture insects, research them, and present their findings, I think many educational areas will be covered

Shamus Bartmess

On my 2nd visit to Mrs. Leadbetter’s classroom, I had the privilege of helping the high school students start on their journey into the realm of research papers. From helping them narrow down their ideas to coming up with ways to focus their ideas into a research paper, I was a busy bee. First though, Mrs. Leadbetter split the class up into four different groups and assigned me and Tahvon to 2 of these groups. My group in particular was somewhat challenging because they didn’t understand their assignment. Therefore, as Boss states in chapter four, I had to remove bottlenecks. I had to help the group to understand their assignment in order for me to help them one on one. Therefore, if I couldn’t help one student, he/she was able to get help from their peers until I was able to help said person. Now, from what I saw of their research paper starter assignment, they were supposed to come up with a research topic and state why they were interested in it. This proved challenging because what seemed to be such a simple assignment to me, proved to be anything but that. In order to make this more understandable for the students I had to, as Boss would say it, expand my project management strategy. In other words, I had to help them find ways to work through their projects. They were very broad in their thinking which would lead to a very long paper. They needed to shorten their papers up so I provided tips on how to focus their ideas. One girl is doing her project on the benefits of 21st century agriculture technology. How could I help her focus her ideas though? I did it by providing subtle hints to not just look at technology, but to look at two or three different technologies which farmers use today that benefit them. Such as focusing on GPS and pesticides, and automatic sprinklers. By doing this, she was able to gain ideas about where she is right now, and where she wants to go with this paper. How though will I be able to help them further understand a research paper? 

One idea which I have for helping the students to understand how to write a research paper is to provide them with an example of a paper which I wrote. By doing this, I would show them how I formed a thesis statement, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. What else would need showing in this though? Well, I could always show how to incorporate sources throughout the paper in different ways. Such as, providing a straight up quote. Another option would be to lead into an author’s idea and not directly quoting them but still giving them the credit for their ideas. This is something that I really struggled with in high school and I would help them to figure it out if I am able. After showing how I went through the process of coming up with thesis and topic sentences, I could show them how I like to write my paper. Then come back and fill it in with quotes from the authors which I have already read in order to really back my paper up. But it comes to my attention now that I should tell them to go ahead and read through different sources first. But how to find good, solid sources can be a challenge. I would also put them through a little exercise which would consist of different websites such as .com websites and .edu or .gov and ask them which is the best scholarly source to use. But by doing this I would be able to help them figure out how to find sources, come up with thesis statements, and show them how to incorporate their sources.

My partner and I had a new experience of which I have mixed feelings. On one had hand, saying goodbye to our previous teacher Mrs. Diette was unfortunate. The times for our visits  just couldn’t work due to our scheduling. In the back of my mind, I will continuously think of the things that could have been with her class and Maury Middle school. However, we were given the privilege of traveling to Rockbridge County Highschool to be apart of Mrs. Leadbetter’s classroom experience.

As we walked through the Highschool, I experienced a very different sight from the Middle School. I saw teenagers on the verge of finding themselves and much more interactions than I am used to. In Mrs. Leadbetter’s class, order was established through humor. This fact was surprising yet interesting and gave me an idea of how to approach the kids in the class.

The class is currently reading the book Night by Elie Wiesel and looking at it through an analytical rhetorical lens. Soon they will be writing informed research papers on a topic of their choice. During this process we have been asked to assist the students in gathering ideas for this paper and potentially helping through the research process. Personally, I am looking forward to getting to know them all to understanding their dynamic and learning tendencies.