Half Day with the Seventh Grade

Practicum was interesting today. The students were only having a half day so the classes were shortened. It started off today with two back-to-back seventh grade classes. They had root word quizzes.

Root word quizzes in Ms. Baldwin's classroom does not revolve around spelling. Rather, students use root words they studied during the week to create sentences where they incorporate the root words into other words. For example, students put the root word “psyche” into sentences like, “My favorite subject in school is psychology because I am interested in the mind.” There were some very creative sentences.

TEAM EXTREME had a team meeting with all four main content teachers-- English, Social Studies, Science, and Math-- and all seventh and eighth graders from the team. They discussed team policies-- some of which defer from other team's policies. I was interested to see how many of the eighth graders voiced rules and policies for the seventh graders before the teachers even discussed them. I think it brought another dynamic into the group when students were teaching their peers.

The end of the day was spent with Ms. Baldwin and I have a planning period. We discussed differentiated instruction and unit planning, mostly. Ms. Baldwin assured me that the process gets easier with experience. She said that using the standards was actually very effective, but they became more easy to incorporate and integrate into the classroom.