Secondary School Journal One Classroom Climate Mrs.

Larche is an eighth grade language arts teacher who has a connected room with her co-teacher Mrs. Bellville. The rooms are connected and separated by a wall that can be opened or closed. Both teachers have a similar classroom set-up. They both have a desk in the front of the room. Each teacher also has two connected white boards and a projector, and a projector screen. The students desks are set up in rows with four sets of two in each row, and the seating is generally boy/girl which surprises me considering the age of the students. The classrooms are set up with much dcor such as posers and colorful bulletin boards. Mrs. Larche and her co-teacher both have a television set in their rooms that they do not use because all the videos are shown on the projector. Mrs. Larche puts posters on her T.V. set because it is not used. The classes are very long, so once in while when the wall in between the classrooms is closed, the teachers switch students halfway through the class, when the wall is opened the classes are combined and both teacher, teach together. The students each have a folder for language arts that they can choose to leave in the classrooms, or take home. I think that sense the classes are so long it is better for the students to switch so they can get up and move. During the week, the classes are usually every other day, but language arts is an everyday class so Mrs. Larch gets to see the same students everyday.

Journal Two Classroom Management In Mrs. Larches classroom, and the rest of the middle school, classroom management is taken seriously. There are three steps, step one is a warning that lets the student know that what they are doing is wrong and they need to stop, step two is a team-time, which is like a pre detention and is only half and hour, and step three is detention, which is a full hour. There are a few ways a student can get detention; one way is by not showing up to the team-time or ignoring the warning, and the second way is continually doing the same thing and action the same way the day after the team-time. An example of this three step system would be when a student kept leaning in his chair so that is was off of the ground, he received two warnings and chose to ignore them both and then he received a team time. Something else the teachers do for classroom management is keeping the students after class when a majority of the class is being disruptive. There is a downside to this method though, the entire class is required to stay after class even if it is not the entire class that is being disruptive, this has happened to me multiple times, where I, along with others, are listening and following the rules and are required to stay after because others are not. I noticed that the students are not good listeners for the most part, which surprised me because they are eighth graders and were acting worse than the third graders I observed. When they are told to be quiet, Mrs. Larches, class barely listened and were not raising their hands when needed. During discussions, which are generally student led, the students tend to begin their own separate conversations. The consequences would generally be the teacher standing in front of the class saying, Ill wait, or I am very disappointed right now. These two phrases

make the students feel guilty sometimes, although this does not always work which ends up having the students stay after class for however much time they wasted. I could tell how different the students, teachers, and classroom management for secondary school is way different than primary schools. Journal Three Differentiated Learning Mrs. Larche just like other teachers uses differentiation in her classroom. The students read some books about differentiation; Chains, Woods Runner, Johnny Tremain, My Brother Sam, and April Morning. The students did Lit-Circles with other students who read the same books as themselves. Each group has a discussion leader who leads the discussion by going through the packets the students received at the beginning of the lit circle unit. In the packets there is vocabulary, questions to use for discussion, and they talk about the book. I think being able to have group discussions are good for some students, while it may not meet the needs of other students who may need to have one-on-one time with the teacher, or may need to work alone. I personally do not like lit-circles, I prefer reading large novels on my own and as fast or slow as I may need to. Although I do not like group work when it comes to reading, I enjoy it with other subjects. Mrs. Larche does work one-on-one, in groups, and allows self-work when needed by the students. The students in Mrs. Larches class do have different learning needs. I noticed a few who needed to work alone, and some who seemed to do better with groups or with Mrs. Larche. In order to help the students who need it, Mrs. Larche shows a few examples on the students homework and in-class work. An example of this was when the students were doing a packet about underlining and italicizing words, Mrs. Larche did the first two or

three with them. In conclusion all students are different and have various learning needs, and Mrs. Larche is good at meeting all of these various needs. It is good for students to use a variety of different ways. Journal Four Learning Activity and its Effectiveness I observed a few learning activities while in Mrs. Larches classroom. One activity I observed in Mrs. Larches classroom was when the students were doing an activity about symbols. The students were shown a power point about different meanings of different symbols. I think the power point made the lesson easier to understand. At the end of the power point Mrs. Larche had her students stand up if they had some kind of company symbol on their clothes or shoes, and asked them what they think of when they see that symbol. This showed the student what they would actually be doing. The students then received a worksheet where they were to pick a symbol and write a paragraph about what it made them think and feel and why they chose the symbol. Then they were to draw or put a picture of the symbol on the back of the worksheet. I believe that showing the students the power point and involving the students helped show the students the point of the project and what they needed to do for the project. Another learning activity I observed was when the students began their gothic horror unit. They read a poem called Annabel Lee written by Edgar Allan Poe. For the learning activity the students were to finish the poem by filling in the blanks by using the provided word bank. After they completed this they were supposed to read the poem and see how it related to their unit which showed them that gothic romance fits in with their gothic horror unit. With this unit they

also read plays and watched the movie, they had to fill out a worksheet while watching the movie. Journal Five Technology in the Classroom In Mrs. Larches classroom there is quite a bit of technology. Each teacher has their own laptop provided by the school so Mrs. Larche uses that instead of bringing in her own. She uses the laptop to find videos to show to the students and to check her email, also provided by the school. Mrs. Larche also has a projector and a projection screen, which she can hook her laptop up to. She can show videos, movies, or assignments on the projector. The school has laptops that they check out to the students and teachers use. The students were typing essays and speeches on their favorite author, so they used the laptops. One of the students in Mrs. Larches class broke his arm that he uses to write with. He has to use a miniature laptop provided by the school to type out any written assignments and prints them out. This makes it easier for him to write and much simpler for the teachers to read and grade. The students also use the laptops to take star tests, which are tests over a book that the student has read. With technology in classrooms today it is mainly used for learning and in the curriculum, also most students use only technology anyway. In our Indianola schools the students will all receive either an I-pad or Mac-Book for their entire high school careers and will be able to buy them out. Eventually with technology, textbooks will cease to exist offline.