Janelle's+4th+Journal

Once again, Jon and I had taught 3rd and 4 hour at Mankato West High School. The majority of our lesson was discussing the new terms they were introduced to the day before (Onomatopoeia, Assonance, Consonance, Alliteration) in conjunction with Edgar Allen Poe's "The Bells". We broke them into groups of 4-5, six groups in total, and gave them group time to find examples within the poem of the terms they had learned about throughout the lesson. Near the end of the lesson, we would come back together as a class and discuss the examples they had found in the poem, no matter how many examples they had.

On Monday, we had noticed that the students were very inactive when it came to poetry. Thus, we implemented a little reward for those that spoke out and wanted to engage in the lesson being taught. When they had gotten a question right, or read out loud, or gave us a definition of a term, we gave them candy. The amount of children that had started to actively be involved with the lesson increased tenfold, and not just because of the candy. They were all shouting out answers when we asked, and were motivated to find examples in the poem to understand the terms. It was a drastic change in the way they were on Monday, which was a plus for us, since we had a bit more fun in the class than on Monday.

There was one incident when the class got a little out of hand during 3rd hour (4th hour had the same problem, but they had corrected themselves within seconds of knowing what they were doing). When we wanted to move on with what we had planned in the class, they got a bit loud and were not going to stop talking, so I was the one that yelled out to them to be quiet. Perhaps I should've gone a different route instead of yelling "Guys!" in the middle of the classroom, but it got the point across when I wanted them to quiet down. There was a group of boys in the front, too, that were causing disruptions to the class, so I had tried out our technique of being near the group for the most part while working the smart board. It worked. I'll have to try out that technique some more when we teach again.