Observation/PreAssessment

Today’s administration of the preassessment proved to be rather difficult for the students of the classroom I observe. My partner and I are teaching the students about Virginia’s regions and bordering states, but this is the first major exposure the students have had to this material. Our preassessment was a map of Virginia and its bordering states; however we removed the names of each state and had the students fill it in based on their prior knowledge. We also had students mention any info they knew about the regions. Some of the students were frustrated because they weren’t sure of the answers even though we told them to just try their best. However, this gave us an opportunity to see the range of knowledge our students have. Some students were more familiar with things than others, I overheard a student say, “oh I know this my uncle showed me where this was before.” My partner and I are just going to use this as an opportunity to link new and old material and be as innovative as possible making the lessons interactive and interesting. Just because the material is relatively straight forward doesn’t mean that it can be exciting. We’ve planned to incorporate a “Virginia Journal” in which students compile all the information that we go over throughout the unit. This will allow students to have something to reference during and after our unit is complete. We’ve created handouts, PowerPoint’s, etc. We will begin our teaching this week Wednesday and I am looking forward to it.