Today was my last individual session with my literacy group. I have had an amazing experience working with these children. I was scared at first to work with fifth graders and in a high needs school but I have gained nothing but positive outcomes from this experience. If I had the chance to continue working with the students I most certainly would.
I had the students fill out a teacher evaluation for me today and I got nothing but positive responses on that. I asked the students various questions and asked them to write yes or no in response to the question. The questions were all about my performance as a teacher and I asked the students to explain why if they wrote no because that means I had not done something well. It turned out that none of the students responded no to any of the questions. That means, they must have felt that I did a decent job over the past few months. The only negative responses that I got on the teacher evaluation was when I asked the students to write one thing they would change about the college tutor experience. At first all the students in my group were like "There is nothing we would change because we liked it so much" and then someone said "I wish it was longer." This gave all the other students the idea to write the same thing. I asked the students to clarify what they meant by longer and they said they wished the college students came into their classroom more often meaning both more days a week and for longer than an hour and fifteen minutes each week. I got the impressions based on the students' responses to the teacher evaluations that they have really enjoyed this experience and I am glad because I am partly responsible for that and I have enjoyed the experience also.
My actual lesson today went well. I taught the students in my group about facts versus opinions. We watched two infomercials on YouTube and then discussed common characteristics in an infomercial. Then I asked students to say a fact and opinion that they heard in the infomercial. The next task was to create an infomercial as a group that is trying to sell a green marker. That was really funny. The uses that the students were coming up with for the green marker was making me laugh. Then once we finished the green marker infomercial I had students create their own individual infomercials.
For the individual infomercials I asked students to draw a random object out of a bag and then try to sell it using the characteristics of infomercials that we discussed as well as making sure to say some facts and opinions about the object. I challenged the students to come up with a use for their object other than its actual purpose. For example I said if they drew a shoe out of the bag they could not create an infomercial about a shoe. This was a challenging task for the students and I am not sure if it was because my directions were not clear or they were not able to think creatively, but most of the students created an infomercial about the real object such as a deck of cards. They were successful at saying at least three facts and three opinions about their object in their infomercial though which was good because that is what I was actually assessing.
Next week we have a talent show planned for the students to see but they do not know (at least my group does not). Today my group wanted me to tell them what is planned for next week and if it was small group or whole group activities and I said a little bit of both. I cannot wait to see their expressions and hopefully excitement as us teachers get silly and perform on stage. It is going to be a great time. I am sad that next week truly will be the last week though. I have a had a great time working with these students and getting to know them as individuals and I have a feeling I am going to miss them.
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