Today was a really great day at CCHS. In Mrs. Johns' class, there were very few students, so it was a great opportunity to get one-on-one time with the students. During class today, they were working on a practice in annotating articles. Mrs. Johns gave each of them a short, simple article to read over and she wrote out five different annotations for them to consider. Mrs. Johns said that her goal is to give her students the skills that they need in order to pick out important information in the articles, and that the best way to do that is through annotation of non-fiction works.
Anna Warnell was also in the class this morning, so there were enough adults in the room to pair up with two students each. I sat with my two students and we read over the article and I tried my best to guide them in the annotating process. This article covered the different parts of a cell, so I had to make sure to use my science knowledge (of which there is little) in order to help them. This was a very good task for the students, and they were able to see immediate progress. This immediate progress was an encouragement to keep going in the task at hand, so most students were able to get a lot done in the 15 minute period Mrs. Johns gave them. After the finished annotating, Mrs. Johns handed out a chart so that the students could identify the vocabulary words throughout the article. Since they had annotated, the students were able to readily pick out the vocabulary words and fill in their definitions.
Though this task was great and useful for me, my favorite part of today's class had nothing to do with the students' assignment. I noticed that one of the students had a solved Rubix Cube with him at his desk. I stopped by his desk and asked him if he knew how to solve it. He answered yes, and he told me that if I wanted to scramble it, he could solve it for me. Of course I wanted to see this skill in action, and given that he was done with his work, it would give him something to do. I quietly scrambled the cube in the back of the classroom, handed it to him, and within a minute, he had solved it. Honestly, I was shocked. We repeated this a few more times, and soon the class had all noticed what we were doing. Instead of being a distraction for the students, this became an opportunity for this student to show off his skill. On a normal day, this student is very quiet and completes his work before anyone else; he isn't one that always stands out. On this day, however, he shone in the classroom. His classmates couldn't believe that he could solve the cube so quickly and they couldn't understand how on earth he did it in the first place.
This was such a great moment for me as a teacher. Seeing the other students amazed by their peer was so much fun, and I smiled throughout the entire interaction. I could see that the student was so proud of himself and enjoyed the praise from Mrs. Johns, his classmates, and myself. Seeing as though he doesn't usually receive any attention, I was so glad that he was getting the chance to be the "star of the show," even if just for a moment. These interactions are part of the reason that I want to become a teacher. When students feel valued and unique, it improves their performance in the classroom and outside of the classroom, which it the ultimate goal of education.
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