Back to Elementary School

Today in Literacy in Diverse Classrooms (a class that teaches how to incorporate reading and writing into every content area) we had presentations by the history and music groups on incorporating reading and writing into their content area. The history group was going to show the School House Rock song/cartoon about passing a bill but it wouldn't work...I was disappointed. Well, then the music group had us circle up on the floor and sing a Native American song and then they gave us a Native American poem and half of us had to come up with motions and the other half used instruments to go along with it. My group was the motions group. We had colored scarves that we used for our 'interpretive dance', if you will. I laughed so hard! We had so much fun expressing 'dancing teepees' and high mountain tops. I felt like I was in elementary school again and I loved it! It's so fun to be a kid every once in awhile in classes and today was that day.
I've come to realize that I've learned more from this class than I realized. I just got my student teaching placements yesterday and the second one is with the same teacher I had for practicum this year. You'd think that'd be good but not exactly. You see, the teacher gives open book tests and the kids fail them. Something's very wrong here. Part of it is their lack of interest or care for the class so that is my first challenge: to grab their attention and get them involved. The other part, I believe after having Literacy in Diverse Classrooms, is that these kids are very poor readers. If they can't even take an open book test where you basically find the bold words and fill it in on the test, then, in my opinion, they are having difficulty comprehending what they are reading so it will be my job and my mission to improve this and work on their reading skills while teaching science. Could be rough. Anyways, that was a very 'education major' oriented paragraph, but hey, that's me.