Friday, March 16, 2007

Observation

My principal informed me today that she's doing my annual observation on Monday. Now, I don't like this woman and she doesn't like me, and I'm a little worried that she'll screw me on my evaluation. I considered doing some old lessons that I've done for observations in the past, but I kind of feel obligated to show her exactly what we did at NITS, and what I would have done at the month-long intensive, so I think I'm doing Sculpture Garden.

I usually start with walking with text images (butterflies in your stomach, song in your heart, etc.) before having them pair up for Sculpture Garden. The thing is, there's really not enough room for 27 kids to do Sculpture Garden all at once, so I usually split them into two groups. Group One works while Group Two sits, then they switch.

I really need a way to get the sitting group involved. Asking for feedback about what they saw is fine, but I think the sitters should probably be writing something (the problem with Sculpture Garden is that there's no clear evaluation or assessment). Merely having them describe how a kid's arm position showed "power" or "terror" or "parting is such sweet sorrow" kind of seems like pointless busy work. Any ideas?

I'm also considering Building a Sonnet, but I'm worried that it takes too long to get to the payoff and my principal will only be there for 45 minutes, but if you've got a compelling reason why I should do Building a Sonnet instead, I'm all ears.

1 Comments:

At 8:15 AM, Blogger Christine McBurney said...

My students always have their theatre journals open in class to record impressions, questions, ideas, images, feelings, quotes, vocab, etc. It's an active way for them to participate. They become quite attached to their journals and are bummed when I keep them overnight to grade. It's a great tool for you. When you read them you're amazed at how much you've covered and uncovered! And you really get to know them.

Good Luck!

 

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