CI 515: Strategy Journal 1 (Marzano Ch.5 Focused Practice)

Today was the first day of my clinicals. I am doing Clinical I and II together. My assignment was for Huntington Middle School (6th Grade Social Studies). I requested high school, so getting assigned to a middle school was a surprise. Sixth grade is really interesting. The classroom I'm in used to be the special education office so it is extremely small. They've crammed 20 desks into this classroom, plus a teachers desk and 6 small computer tables with outdated computers (still have floppy disk drives), a smart board and projector. It's very hard to move around in the classroom. The class also has laptops (also very old) that the teacher Mr. David Williams uses because he can't get into the computer lab because it's full. He told me he is a very hands on teacher and likes for his students to participate in discussions and group projects.

Today they working on a group project on the Industrial Revolution and their EQ was: What's the price of progress? The students work in groups at least once a week and the group fills out a paper each week on their progress. The students use the internet to find information. Mr. Williams set up a site that has a list of about 30 links that they are allowed to use to find the information. The site is: http://poster.4teachers.org/. The students have to take notes on the information found on the websites for their project. After they've obtained their information the groups will work on a presentation that they will have to present to the class. The kids seemed to like working on projects. The strategy used here is that of Practice from Marzano Chapter 5. It's the strategy of "focused practice," where the students are practicing a complex, multi-step skill or process, in this case it is the research process. (Marzano, 2001, p. 70) It is focused because the students were given an essential question to focus their research process on.

When the groups first got started they had to develop a "group contract." The contract gives them a little control over the group and makes each member responsible to the group. The contract "governs" the groups actions and the consequences (e.g. they can "fire" group members who aren't contributing to the group effort) and it also establishes a group leader and assigns each member a task. It also establishes group communication. I think that this is great for this age group. Kids this age tend to rebel against dictates from authority figures and sometimes kids are harder on each other and can get other group members to do tasks that they teacher may not.

One other thing that I found out today is that they won't be doing summer school this summer. Since they aren't doing summer school, they have come up with a way for the kids who are failing to get a passing grade so they won't have to fail and repeat the grade and it is called "Recovery School." Recovery School is one hour after school each day in a designated classroom. Teachers are required to come up with some kind of work that the students can complete at Recovery School, in the specific course, in order to raise a failing grade to a passing grade. It tends to be worksheets and things of this nature. The amount of work to be completed is based on how far their failing grade is from being a passing grade. They can take as long as they like to complete the work, however it has to be done by a certain date. There is also a bus or buses that are available to take students home after Recovery School. It's a interesting idea and because of it's nature it seems to be part of NCLB. However, I'm not sure that they really learn anything this way because they are just completing a worksheet in order to get a passing grade. I wondered if anyone else is in a school with a program like this and what they think about this? Also, does anybody know why they aren't doing summer school this year? Food for thought.

Basically this was my first day. Sixth graders are entirely different "breed" of student. It was actually an interesting day.