Clinical Observation Hours 22-30

I finished my clinical hours on Thursday! It was a fun day because all of Mrs. Dazley's CTE classes were cooking in the lab, so it was really great for me to see how she ran the kitchen. They didnt actually 'cook'. They were to make sugar-free strawberry shakes. I liked this right off because that sounds really good and its sugar-free so its pretty healthy, so you could talk about that later in modifying recipes to be healthy!

To start with she had the whole class come back and watch her as she explained what they were to do and all the parts of the blender etc. She took about 10 min. explaining and had to hurry since they are only in her class for about 45 minutes. When she was finished it was the kids time to cook! They all seemed really excited about this, which is good!! I am glad they like lab days as much as I do. Each group had to first assign out who was doing what job, since at the end they also had to give each other a grade to make sure that everyone was doing their part. She had 3 classes of CTE and they are all right in a row and the first 3 periods of the day, she she had to keep organized and clean. Most groups did a good job cleaning up, especially since they would be marked down if they weren't. There were only a few that needed some extra tidying up!

Today, I also brought in my 'bulletin board' or poster that Mrs. Dazley had me do. Her Teen Living class has been talking about stress so I made a poster withs some different ways to relieve stress. She used it in her class and they went through each of the different ideas and talked about how they could use that in their life and if it would be helpful to them. I feel like the bulletin board turned out well!

Today I also had a glimpse into all the time it takes to set out and prepare for each classes lab, and the amount of laundry you get to do as a FACS teacher!! I took the liberty of switching out the laundry and folding them all for her and I realized that is just one of the 'little details' you forget about! Of course the laundry doesn't wash itself! She does have teacher aides and she told me that she usually had them fold and switch them over, so she tries to use them as much as possible.

DISCIPLINE: As far as discipline this day, she did a good job of managing the students especially in the labs. She has some very large class sized so she had 6 in a group for most of them. She doesn't like having that many, ideally she said she would prefer 4 to a group but she did what she could to work with it.

TEACHING TECHNIQUES: One of the techniques she used today was that she made each of them assign out what they were to do BEFORE they began cooking so that way everyone participate and everyone had certain jobs they were responsible for. She also had them grade each other which kept most of them in check to do their assigned jobs. I thought this was a great idea.

MANAGEMENT: I feel that especially in middle school settings, the students need to be reminded of what they are supposed to be doing in order to be on schedule. As I walked around to the cooking groups, I would remind each group that once they had measured their ingredients and put them in the blender, they could start to wash the majority of their dishes. Most groups would all stand around the blender and watch but in order to finish on time they needed to get going!! They just needed a push in the right direction! Not everyone needed to stand around and watch it 'blend'. If they learned to multi-task like this, the groups were cleaned and finished on time!