Week 9

Week 9...  Can you believe it?  The time has gone so fast, and I am starting to feel like I am in a groove at my school, which is both a positive and a negative.  It's good, because I am feeling very comfortable in my position.  It's not so good, because I don't want to get into a rut.  My goals for the next few weeks are to offer to teach a Thanksgiving lesson in the English classes and to observe more teachers.

This week I did some more reading tutoring.  I have noticed that these two Polish students are getting better at English pronunciation and that their reading fluency is improving.  I would like to do some research on techniques to improve reading fluency and help these students even more.

I also met for the second time with my group of 7th grade students during Lernzeit on Tuesday.  This week we worked on the present perfect (I have gone, I have seen, etc.), since that is what they told me they were working on in their English class.  I would like to prepare some fun lessons for these students, as well.

On Tuesday I also taught a 7th grade lesson for Frau Krumrück while she was administering a test.  I was given materials by Frau Krumrück and just asked to present them, so I am not writing my own lessons yet, but it was nice being able to teach.  We started with a word search, did some grammar, and then did a listening activity before I gave students some work time.  The class period was up and down, sometimes students payed attention and were engaged, but sometimes it got a little too much to handle.  I am still working on my classroom management, as I feel this is my weakest point as a teacher.  I think I have some good role models here at the school, though, so hopefully I will learn a lot this year.

I attended another history class this week and talked about the Constitution and patriotism again.  I also visited a 12th grade class to help administer a test.  At the end of this class period there was some time left, so I introduced myself and answered a couple questions.

On Friday I observed a 7th grade German grammar class.  This is something I want to make a habit of, because I know I will learn a lot from these classes.  On this day they were reviewing the parts of the sentence and the different cases in German.  I took a lot of notes.  Although I understood what they were talking about, a lot of the information is presented differently in the United States.  For example, when I learned German I was presented the cases in this order: nominative, accusative, dative, genetive.  In the classes I've observed so far, however, students learn the cases in this order: nominative, genetive, dative, accusative.  It's interesting to me as a grammar nerd!

- Amy