Week One of Student Teaching January 17

This is my first week student teaching. It was the last week of the term for my students so mostly I just helped my cooperating teacher (awesome!) finish up the novel "Mississippi Trial 1955" and do some end of term testing. The most effective thing we did was Book Interviews. Mrs. Johnson has her students read a book of their choice outside of class every term. At the end of the term each student brings that book to class and we sit down with them one-on-one and interview them about the book. The first part of the interview is the teacher opening the book and reading aloud. When the student knows whats going on in the book they stop the teacher and expound on that scene. Then they give a brief overview of the plot, and then the teacher asks questions about characters, and themes.

This means that I now have a way of doing book reports that gets away from the old boring stand up and tell the class about it. I think the one-on-one interview is much more nerve racking and causes them to actually read the book. It also mean that I might get my students to engage a text a deeper level then they might otherwise since they know they will have to talk about characters and themes. And finally it may get some kids reading who dislike the activity, they may even learn to enjoy it.

Even though I think this is effective and easy to do for me and for the student, I don't think it will be what I do every term. I like book projects and may have them do those, more creative versions of a book report. I took the opportunity to ask why they chose the book they did and why they liked it. This gave me the opportunity to get to know the student better, and that information and relationship should help me as a teacher, and help the student teacher relationships I make in the future.