- The purpose of this extended opportunity to work with a certified teacher and students is to become as involved as possible in the work of a real teacher. Observation is helpful and can be meaningful learning if it is focused and intentional. However, it is always preferable to be as actively engaged as allowed in the work the teacher does.
Here are some suggested ways to engage:
- Read aloud to whole class or small groups
- Help to monitor and assist students with independent work and projects.
- Work with students in breakout rooms or small groups.
- Learn grading procedures and assist with grading.
- Take over daily routines as your cooperating teacher feels comfortable—calendar, attendance, Mountain Math, morning meeting, hall duty, etc.
- Re-teach a lesson to a small group that did not understand or that was not present.
- Construct center activities or games.
- Take students to lunch, specials, etc.
- Tutor individual students.
- Plan and conduct lessons required for methods classes or as made available by your cooperating teacher.
- Observe in other classrooms, course sections, and subjects.
- Research and resource materials that are needed for the next unit of study.
- Collect instructional resources, children's books, YA literature, articles, approved technologies and apps, etc.
- Implement a cooperative learning lesson.
- Help to administer sample reading inventories, running records, interest surveys, other individual informal or formal assessments.
- Observe a parent/guardian teacher conference
- Respond to classroom based written or digital journal entries.
- Organize the classroom library.
- Prepare the room or lay out materials for the next day.
- Attend grade-level planning meetings.
- Attend PTSA meetings, professional development sessions, ARDs, assemblies, and student events.
- Attend faculty/team/PLC meetings
- Write reflections (observational notes/anecdotal records) on what you see and do. Record “data” on what you see and experience and analyze what you observe in terms of your own identity and goals as a teacher? What do you want to remember an emulate? What is the teacher doing? Is it working, and why? How did an interaction go and why? How would you do things differently ?