Day 5 of Unit

I feel today I had a really cool activity for my students. They at first seemed to think it was weird but by the end they thought it was fun. What I did was do a draft lottery with them. Basically, as they walked in I gave them a draft card. I had them write their name, date of birth, height weight, home address, and sign it...basically acted as if this were their draft card. I put a power point up and pulled numbers. Those that got pulled had to say goodbye to their friends and go to the back of the classroom where they were at war. I explained to those left that we had no idea what was going on with their friends and we talked about how that would make them feel. I then had the one student "killed in action." I reported the news to the class and we talked again about the guilt that some of the students felt for not being there and the saddness. The other people at war came back either physically or emotionally injured and I made them go through daily life. I asked them how that made them feel and asked those that didn't go to war how it made them feel to see their friends in pain. We had an excellent conversation on dealing with war in many aspects which I tied into Chapter 3 of the novel

Their quiz scores today were worse than the quiz before. I think a lot of them read earlier last week and then did not look over it over the weekend. They missed very easy questions. I also noticed that many of my students had the case of the Monday's-they were tired, non-responsive, and looked like they were going to fall asleep at any given moment. I was hoping for a better discussion but it was like pulling teeth. I'm trying to find ways to deal with this since they are such small classes and they are so early in the morning.

One thing that kinda annoyed me was in the middle of my lesson, my co-op interjected an idea he wanted the students to know. I felt like a complete IDIOT...like I was not intelligent enough to teach. I know he was just doing it to make sure all the classes had the same information by the time he takes over, but I wish he would have talked to me about it before class or after class and said what he wanted emphasized. I don't want spoon fed but I want more support than I am getting. I just don't know what to do. I feel like maybe he thinks I'm dumb, but anytime I ask how I'm doing he's says "all's good." Ugh! My professor comes tomorrow and my supervisor comes the next day so hopefully I'll get some constructive criticism. Too bad I'll only had like 3 more days to use it this semester.

Oh well, just got to stay positive! :)