On Tuesday, we had another presentation by a lady named Ariana from the financial aid office who handed out a brochure to everybody and explained in detail the way to get it and how to be qualified and etc. She also took any questions that students had. The information was very helpful, even for me, because I never really had anybody explain these things in such detail. Or perhaps I did in high school but at that time I didn't know much to be able to understand the importance of it all as I do now. For these adult students, money is a real issue and so they can understand and pay more attention to the financial aid process and how it works.
At 7 pm, Ariana was done with the presentation and left. So then Linda started the 'Teacher Man' by Frank McCourt that the students had to read over the weekend. She first began by talking to the class about the book itself like the publication, the reviews on the back, and the author. Linda even took it further to ask the students what they usually look at when they want to buy a book and some students commented the summary or the first page or just the back of the book. She also asked me what I look at to be able to critically judge a book and I told her I look at the introduction and the contents page.
Afterwards, Linda asked students to take out their 'Triple Entry' assignment to read the quotes they have chosen along with their comments. A lot of people raised their hands to participate in this portion of the activity. Most students were able to make a personal connection with the author. She also asked me what my opinion was as soon as she gave her own opinion of choosing the quote that McCourt gave about not sitting behind a desk as a teacher in a class. Interestingly enough as soon as she mentioned that, I was amused that it got my attention too as I was reading. I so told this to the class about how when I read that I remembered Linda and reasoned why she always moves away the desk and does not sit behind the desk in the class.
For the next activity, students were taught how to write descriptive paragraphs by looking at a sample and learning about "RENNS" (reason, example, number, name, senses). They were then asked to write two descriptive paragraphs about somebody they admire right there in class. This was done at 8:40 pm and she gave students the rest of the class time to do it. As they were writing their descriptive paragraphs, Linda warned them that they will be exchanging their works with classmates on Thursday. At about 8:55, she let the class know to do the rest for home work and took the last 5 minutes to ask students what they wrote about and basically go over the home works they have to do. Although she wanted to originally do some Math in the end since there was no time, she changed her mind to do that on Thursday instead.
On Thursday, August 19, the class started with Linda reminding the class of the descriptive paragraphs they had to finish up for home work. Students took the paragraphs out and went right into the first activity of exchanging it with classmates to read it and to take notes on it about 'RENNS' and see if that was applied in the essay. Since there was a bigger amount of people this day than on Tuesday, she asked one of the students to please explain what they did last time to those who weren't here.
Once that was over, from 6:30 to about 7:45, I taught my 3rd lesson, which I have already made a blog of.
Right after my lesson, Linda reminded the students about what I did and how some extra things to remember about conclusion paragraphs and let them know that for home work, they must do a conclusion paragraph (based on what I did) for their two descriptive paragraphs. So then they took a 10-minute break until 8 pm.
From 8 to 8:30, Linda did a "mini-lesson" on Pythagorean Theorem [PT] (a squared + b squared = c squared), a formula used to find the missing side of a right triangle. She explained it in such an easy way that I was amazed. I was able to see where the "squared" came from based on the diagram she did on the board. For me, I learned the theorem when in high school but I only learned to memorize the formula not really understand where it came from. For the next 30 minutes of the class, students worked on the PT packet and Linda and I went around to see how they were doing.
I have to say, I'm very sad to be seeing the class coming to an end, or should I say my role as an intern in the class. I've grown very close with all the students and I will be sad to let go.
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