Day 6...And here we go again.

I relaxed during the weekend. Maybe a little too much. Honestly, I think a little too much. I have mad respect for my cooperating teacher. I said that if there were more ends to a candle she would be burning them all. It is unfortunate she only have 2 ends to burn. I went home everyday just...exhausted.

We are actually start getting into The Outsiders this week.

Today we talked about Vocabulary. I was a little stoked to see how she did vocab. I know that I am not a teacher for direct instruction but it is definitely the way it needs to go in the 8th grade. I am not planning to be some happy puppet on the string and then on the other hand I don't think a different method of instruction will help these kids. I guess I am just going to try and go the direct approach and occaisionally add a little "Liza" to things to keep everything fresh. I wouldn't want to change things up, then when I am gone in 11 weeks have the kids hanging in the wind.

We discussed context clues and the difference between inferential context clues and direct context clues. I enjoy when we get down to the "bare bones" language stuff. I am learning that my expectations of the students are a little more "lofty" for that of an 8th grader. I am going to have to pull back a bit.

Stereotypes was a discussion in one of the groups. Was S.E. Hinton a girl or a boy? Some students said boy. When asked, "Why?" They went on to say because she is writing about a boy oh and my favorite was because she wrote with S.E. as a name. As I already have implied by saying "she" the students found out that the author of The Outsiders was a girl. I contributed later that S.E. Hinton was not the only girl that wrote about boys and used their initials as their author name. Who else can you think of? Harry Potter's author of course! J.K. Rowling.

I never would have expected the need for so much review but the students definitely benefit from the repetition.

I meet with my university supervisor tomorrow. Very nervous.

LGD