I have completed my first week of my observations in Ms. M's classroom at CHS and I have been really enjoying it. The class is a junior level IB class and they just began a unit on Truman Copote's In Cold Blood.
Ms. M started off the unit by giving the students a lot of background on Capote and the murder case that the book covers. She wanted the students to always keep in mind that these murders really did happen but at the same time take everything Capote says with a grain of salt. I think it was important for her to explain to them that even though something is based off of true events, that doesn't make everything in the book factual. The book is colored with biases and conversations/thoughts between characters that Capote imagined rather than observed.
CHS works on a block schedule so the classes are longer than I am used to and Ms. M does a good job of filling the time with a mixture of individual work, group work, and lecture. Of the three classes I have observed so far she has worked each of those elements into class and I think it works well. Although students are in there for a long time they don't have much time to get bored and they are constantly involved in doing something
Ms. M started off the unit by giving the students a lot of background on Capote and the murder case that the book covers. She wanted the students to always keep in mind that these murders really did happen but at the same time take everything Capote says with a grain of salt. I think it was important for her to explain to them that even though something is based off of true events, that doesn't make everything in the book factual. The book is colored with biases and conversations/thoughts between characters that Capote imagined rather than observed.
CHS works on a block schedule so the classes are longer than I am used to and Ms. M does a good job of filling the time with a mixture of individual work, group work, and lecture. Of the three classes I have observed so far she has worked each of those elements into class and I think it works well. Although students are in there for a long time they don't have much time to get bored and they are constantly involved in doing something