"During the first week of your internship placement, I expect you to fully explore the subject matter content of your course. Get a copy of the syllabus, required textbook(s), any available handouts & overheads, any instructional resources (i.e., ANGEL, media, supplemental materials, outside resources/experiences) and/or any available assessment measures.
Provide a descriptive overview of the subject matter content in your Internship Blog. Feel free to upload examples that you care to comment on. Also, feel free to reflect on and/or pose questions about what you have reviewed.
Discuss with your mentor teacher what aspects of the subject matter content you might consider teaching over the course of the semester. Please report this information in your Internship Blog."
Meeting with my mentor teacher had a comical side to it. None of us knew the other person's physical appearance--and we "waited" for each other for about ten to fifteen minutes even though we were couple tables away from each other! We were, however, able to meet and have our discussion.
My mentor kindly went over her syllabus explaining the changes she made to the original departmental syllabus. The syllabus was thorough and its objectives were clear. The class that I will be observing is an academic writing class for undergraduate students. The main goals of the class are to help the student write a coherent essay for various academic purposes. Since I studied L2 writing for some time, I held a very special interest for this class. There are three major assignments that take %55 of the entire course grade: the first paper is a reaction paper; the second is a research paper; and the third paper is an extension and a modification of the second paper. In addition, class participation and homework counts for %25 of the grade. The instructor also included online discussion boards, which, in my view, is very smart because it allows the students who do not wish to talk in class due to cultural or personal aspects participate in a different medium outside the walls of the class. Unlike any other English class that I took or even observed, this is the first class in which peer review tasks are built into the course from the beginning. These tasks are not considered part of participation--rather, they hold %15 of the total grade. This, I hope, will cause the students to consider peer review as a serious assignment rather than a small assignment that may not count for more than 1 percent of the entire grade. In addition, building this interaction at the start of the semester will portray to the students the useful aspects of peer review.
The final %5 of the grade goes toward designing a portfolio. The instructor did not mention whether she wants the portfolio to be in a hardcopy form or electronic. I plan to discuss this with her in our second meet up. Regardless, I would REALLY love to teach on the day in which we introduce them to designing a portfolio. I enjoy this type of assignments because it has two of my favorite things to see as a teacher: students' progress and another side of students' creativity (artistically or electronically etc.).
Last semester, students enrolled in ESL 15 studied and discussed the issue of the native and the nonnative speaker topic. Based on my observations last semester, the students did not respond to that unit as expected. In this class, however, the unit had changed; and the class is a film based class. I never took a film based class before, but looking over a sample of the unit, I find the class interesting. Students would go to read Yahoo's movie comments and study them from the rhetorical triangle perspective--who is the author, what is the message, and who is reading it? I find these types of assignments refreshing and would suit the diverse body of students and their diverse fields of study.
My mentor said that I can come to class during the first week of February. Although it is a week from know, I wish that it would be sooner. She is also flexible on what I can teach. But I feel that I need to observe more classes then teach. Nonetheless, in real situations, the idea of knowing the students very well before the class starts is not typical. But, in this situation, I think that I would teach the students better if they knew me and I knew them. Hopefully in a week I would take over the class for 15 minutes and help in designing the lesson plans.
Provide a descriptive overview of the subject matter content in your Internship Blog. Feel free to upload examples that you care to comment on. Also, feel free to reflect on and/or pose questions about what you have reviewed.
Discuss with your mentor teacher what aspects of the subject matter content you might consider teaching over the course of the semester. Please report this information in your Internship Blog."
Meeting with my mentor teacher had a comical side to it. None of us knew the other person's physical appearance--and we "waited" for each other for about ten to fifteen minutes even though we were couple tables away from each other! We were, however, able to meet and have our discussion.
My mentor kindly went over her syllabus explaining the changes she made to the original departmental syllabus. The syllabus was thorough and its objectives were clear. The class that I will be observing is an academic writing class for undergraduate students. The main goals of the class are to help the student write a coherent essay for various academic purposes. Since I studied L2 writing for some time, I held a very special interest for this class. There are three major assignments that take %55 of the entire course grade: the first paper is a reaction paper; the second is a research paper; and the third paper is an extension and a modification of the second paper. In addition, class participation and homework counts for %25 of the grade. The instructor also included online discussion boards, which, in my view, is very smart because it allows the students who do not wish to talk in class due to cultural or personal aspects participate in a different medium outside the walls of the class. Unlike any other English class that I took or even observed, this is the first class in which peer review tasks are built into the course from the beginning. These tasks are not considered part of participation--rather, they hold %15 of the total grade. This, I hope, will cause the students to consider peer review as a serious assignment rather than a small assignment that may not count for more than 1 percent of the entire grade. In addition, building this interaction at the start of the semester will portray to the students the useful aspects of peer review.
The final %5 of the grade goes toward designing a portfolio. The instructor did not mention whether she wants the portfolio to be in a hardcopy form or electronic. I plan to discuss this with her in our second meet up. Regardless, I would REALLY love to teach on the day in which we introduce them to designing a portfolio. I enjoy this type of assignments because it has two of my favorite things to see as a teacher: students' progress and another side of students' creativity (artistically or electronically etc.).
Last semester, students enrolled in ESL 15 studied and discussed the issue of the native and the nonnative speaker topic. Based on my observations last semester, the students did not respond to that unit as expected. In this class, however, the unit had changed; and the class is a film based class. I never took a film based class before, but looking over a sample of the unit, I find the class interesting. Students would go to read Yahoo's movie comments and study them from the rhetorical triangle perspective--who is the author, what is the message, and who is reading it? I find these types of assignments refreshing and would suit the diverse body of students and their diverse fields of study.
My mentor said that I can come to class during the first week of February. Although it is a week from know, I wish that it would be sooner. She is also flexible on what I can teach. But I feel that I need to observe more classes then teach. Nonetheless, in real situations, the idea of knowing the students very well before the class starts is not typical. But, in this situation, I think that I would teach the students better if they knew me and I knew them. Hopefully in a week I would take over the class for 15 minutes and help in designing the lesson plans.