Week 2 of Internship

This week has been more of a struggle for me as an observer. I am anxious to teach and implement my own ideas in the classroom. I feel I know the students better and am not observing them individually as I was during my first week of teaching. The students seem to be getting into a routine, but are still showing lack of interest and focus in the classroom during most subjects, but especially the first two subjects of the day. I have discussed students' lack of interest and excessive time in completing work with my mentor teacher. We notice students not labeled ADD or ADHD with attention problems and feel that their inability to stay on task is more than expected from an average student. Therefore, we believe there may be students in the classroom that have attention disorders that have not been recognized or treated yet. I am really excited to start my inquiry research, but realize that I must teach without implementing my brain development and attention improving strategies until I have collected enough data to compare my results. The students have done some assessments this week on subjects that have been covered for two weeks. The language assessment was done informally with a scoot activity that was done quickly and simply. Some students did fairly well on the activity and I felt there was less tension and stress on this final assessment because it was done as a game rather than a written formal assessment. Some students did poorly on this final assessment, but they have done poorly with past work on the topic. This shows that the style of assessment cannot be directly linked to these low grades. I am collecting more resources and ideas for my exercise inquiry research based on the articles I found to support my research. One article discusses technological exercise activities and how they effect students with hyperactive and attention disorders. This is especially connected to my students as a large number of them have attention disorders. My placement has supplies for Wii Fit and I am interested in using this as an additional resource to differentiate the kind of exercise my students will experience during my research. I really want to implement new activities each time to keep students interested and eager to see what is planned for each day. I hope by having exercise in the morning and by changing the form of exercise frequently, my students will come to school more anxious and prepared as my research progresses.