During my second day at Dennis M. Kenney Middle School in Hannibal, the class listened to the rest of “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, which I am assuming they had begun on a day that I wasn’t there, since I only go twice a week. This led to the Host Teacher talking to the students about how a story typically plays out, starting with rising action, the climax, falling action, and finally, the resolution, or the ending, using “The Tell-Tale Heart” to exemplify this model. It was the Friday before Halloween, so needless to say, students were a bit excited, and since the Host Teacher was not going to be working the Monday after the weekend, she celebrated Halloween with them on this day.
The Host Teacher played Halloween music for the students, and she did a Halloween-themed Mad Lib with them. I don’t think that they all understood the idea of a Mad Lib, because they were filling in words that were fitting to the context of the story (which she provided them, even though I think that the exercise would have been more fun and funnier for them had she not, since usually, you don’t). Reasons such as these are why this Host Teacher really makes me feel excited to teach. She, like me, stresses good writing and discourages the use of words such as bad, sad, mad, and so forth, encouraging her students to use more descriptive words. I do, however, firmly believe that I would enjoy my Practicum experience without a student teacher sharing the room with me, but that, perhaps, is a story for another time. I was writing a blog entry for my third week at the school, and my computer decided to sign me out without my consent, and I lost the entire blog, which isn’t saved as a draft for some reason.