Field Experience Part 2

I must say that Ms. Allen's 7th grade literature class was my favorite experience from this assignment, along with an interview with her. She is such an inspiring teacher!! She told me that she comes up with a theme every year and this year's theme is rock-n-roll. She has old records dangling from her ceiling and even an old record player where she plays oldies and has students identify literary elements such as personification, etc. Ms. Allen also told me that she wore a cap turned sideways and sang to the students on the first day of school! How I would have loved to see that!! The Eureka Springs Middle School has a lit lab for every grade 5-8, and each literature teacher has a double room that has been opened up to one big room, half set up like a mini-library. I posted some pictures below of Ms. Allen's class and lit lab. Ms. Allen also has a Masters degree in curriculum design and loves developing unique lesson plans. Every nine weeks, a new novel is introduced to the students and a folder is kept and maintained by the students to keep their assignments in related to the novel of that term. They are currently working on Bruiser, but have done Skeleton Creek in the past. I also posted a picture of a students work from Skeleton Creek.

A picture of Ms. Allen's Lit Lab

Another view of Lit Lab

The other half of Ms. Allen's classroom. Notice the old records hanging from the ceiling for her rock-n-roll theme.

Last 9 weeks Book project was on Skeleton Creek. This is an example of the cover created by a student on the file folder along with a plot diagram. The table of contents of what goes in the folder is listed on the inside of the file folder.