Middle School TA

After working at MMS for two weeks I don't have a perfect but a pretty good understanding of how it feels to teach. Over my time I have graded essays, poems, interviews, and homework. I have been able to do more than I believed I would when I planned my project out. I was also gifted with the opportunity to stay later two days this week for Mrs. Westerbacks extra help club where I was able to help students in more subjects than just English. All of our students are so much fun to work with. I was able to teach multiple classes this week where I was in control of the smart board and students. I would start by explaining the lesson to students and giving them examples to respond to. I would then walk around the class and read through student's answers and when I felt that they all had good ones I would go back to the front of the class and continue with the lesson. I think that this was an excellent way to teach the lessons because It taught students the skill they needed and the

Today In classes students worked on a figurative language quiz. Which was a quiz on all of the work that students have been working on since I arrived at MMS. The quiz contained all the types of poetry we learned. It was structured as multiple choice for interpreting poem sections and then filling in the blank for word choice/ personification. Finally, a couple of sections containing write your own small poems. The quiz was pretty lengthy and the majority of students spent most of the class working on the quiz.  I worked from 7:45 am to 2:00 pm. I have now worked 73 hrs and 30 minutes in total.

Today we worked on word choices in poems. Since the beginning of the poetry unit, they have been collecting and placing all of their poems in a slideshow. I have read through and graded them multiple times along with Mrs. Westerback. After having about 7 poems Mrs. Westerback decided that it would be a good idea to spend a class revising and changing words in students' poems. Because we are working with 6th graders you can’t just ask them to revise, you need to show them how and give them examples. We did this by taking poems and putting blank places inside of the poems and asking students to fill in their answers with vivid words. I also spent a lot of my time grading the homework from yesterday which allowed me to see if I was able to get through to students. The good news is that most students seem to understand it with almost no missing homework with most of it being completed correctly. I worked from 7:45 am to 3:00 pm. I have now worked 67 hrs and 15 minutes in total.

Today in classes we worked on personification. Mrs. Westerback used the slideshow that I worked on last Friday. It was a very proud moment to see the slideshow and examples I came up with on the board teaching the students. The way the slideshow was structured was that students would read through one-line examples of personification and then move to personification poems where they responded to two longer ones. Finally into creating their own personification poems. Classes today were also shortened due to aimsweb testing which is another type of Standardized testing. Sadly unlike last week, we didn’t get to watch a movie with students not taking it because all students were taking it today. During mid-morning In Mrs. Westerback and I’s homeroom we met for the test which was long and boring. After aimsweb we went back to classes as normal but a little shorter. I got to teach my own class today by running the board, questions, walking around, and checking students' work. Mrs. Westerb

Today in classes we focused on two main topics. The first topic was lie poems where students worked on how to write a poem using lies. For example I love when there is no coffee in the morning. Students seemed to really enjoy these types of poems because you are saying the opposite of what you mean. Our second main topic was alliteration. Students read through example poems of alliteration and tried to see where they could see it. After working to figure out what alliteration was they then worked on their own to create alliteration in their own poems. We then moved into the final part of the lesson which was preparing students for a figurative language test. We did this by working through a study guide containing examples of personification, Metaphors, similes, hyperbole, and onomatopoeia. I worked from 7:45 am to 4:00 pm. I have now worked 52 hrs and 45 minutes in total.

In class students today focused on similes in poems. This lesson proved to be easier for students to understand due to working on metaphors before. To understand similes we used poems containing similes as examples for how students can write their own similes within poems. Students towards the end of classes also worked on editing some of their previous poems. I also worked on grading poetry interviews from last Monday for Mrs. Westerback in my free time. I was also given the opportunity to watch/control the students' Chromebooks. This was a very interesting job for me to revive because I could see what every student was working on and I could shut tabs unrelated to class. I also stayed after school today to work with Mrs. Westerbacks extra help group after school. This was a cool experience because I got to help students with other subjects and not only English. I worked from 7:45 am to 4:00 pm. I have now worked 44 hrs and 30 minutes in total.