Clinical 2

I have spent the majority of my clinical hours working with students sewing in Mrs. Christensen's class. I have focused on working with the at risk students. These are the kids that I need to help guide their hands when they sew (or else they sew right into the middle of their pajama pants), or they need help staying focused. I have most at one table so I can go between them, but I also float around the room when they are all working to help anyone else who might need it. March 6th was interesting, because the 7th graders all went skiing. I spent most of the day just working on the Bulletin Board.

I have noticed that I frequently just need to rephrase the directions for the kids. It seems like they really just need to hear the directions phrased so they can understand what is expected. Most of them have redone steps two or three times (doing it the same way each time) because they do not understand what they are being told to do. I have told several students that in order to make sure their bobbin cases are in their holders, they need to hear it click. Some were having problems with the bobbin thread bunching up, and it was mostly because they hadn't pushed the case in all the way. Some of these kids have never sewn before, so they weren't sure about that. Once I told them, the problems became less frequent.

Discipline:
The easiest way for Mrs. Christensen to control discipline is to keep the students interested. She told me that the nice part about teaching CTE courses, is that the units change and are so different from each other that the kids can focus on what needs to be done. They are kept interested in each subject. The hardest part of the course is towards the end, when they are into the routine and tired of it. Right now, they are still pretty focused.

Management:
Roll is kept on Powerschool (PowerGrade...yeah). Anyway, she takes roll by looking at the seating chart, she'll call out names of anyone not in their seats because sometimes they wander over to sit by friends. When she calls their name and they are absent, she writes it down on a piece of paper that she prints out with each class labeled on it. The name goes under the respective period, and she enters it all in at the end of the day. This way she isn't trying to enter the roll in between each class, which can be time consuming. The difficulty with this method is that it is time consuming anyway. When I took roll in the classes, the students were moving around in their desks and talking, because they had nothing to do for the first few minutes. It takes a while to write each name when there are several students absent. Then if students are tardy, it needs to be written somewhere else. Overall, I would adjust the arrangement to give them something to do while roll is taken.

Teaching Techniques:
I have observed similar teaching techniques for the last few hours as I saw before, but I did notice some that I started using to help the individual students I was working with. Mrs. Christensen tends to give similar directions to each student, over and over. Some don't really understand this, so I would try to give some examples so they could relate what they were doing to the purpose. I helped a student cut out his pants one day, because he was behind the others. (Mrs. Monk was sick and taken to the Emergency Room suddenly, so he was sewing when he was supposed to be doping the careers group. It was a good thing I came, because things were crazy with everyone working on their sewing projects at once.) He could not understand why he had to line up the grain, so I explained to him how the yarns are lined up, and that if he isn't careful, his pants would twist around and be uncomfortable. He then felt like he had a purpose for doing it, and understood what he needed to do. I told another student that they needed to have even stripes for a sample they were struggling with, and after that it took him ten minutes to finish after spending two days working on it! I have worked to see what the individual students have needed, so I can direct them in ways they understand.