Practice Teaching: Special Project
Purpose The main reason for selecting this special project is because students should be engaged into creating and producing their best work for everyone to see. Through this magazine students cannot only see their work, but they can also receive information such as fun facts, articles, interviews, educational proposals, pictures, art and more. It is imperative that not only creativity takes place, but that the learning process is present. The purpose of this magazine is to start a movement of communication inside the school community on both levels, elementary and secondary. One of the goals is to embrace students into leadership, creativity, diversity and social transformation. Every school should carry on a legacy, something they can remember and cherish. As an English teacher I will not only promote leadership, creativity, diversity and social transformation, but also language. Language plays an important role in this magazine because English will be the main language used in this publication. Although, integrating other languages will also be part of this legacy. The importance of English will be promoted in this community and will place the English subject in a higher level of interest for students, parents and personnel. Involving students into creating their best work in the English class will have a positive effect not only towards the student, but the teachers as well. Students will now have a more appealing motivation because many of them seek recognition and most importantly they want to be remembered. In this level they are still discovering their identity, and the purpose of this magazine is for them to express themselves and let their voice be heard in printed words.
Miss. Clemente (2014)
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Practice Teaching: Special Project
Justification La Voix (The Voice) is a magazine that will not only contribute to student’s knowledge, but also to parents and teachers as well. This magazine will create awareness of outstanding work, important events and interesting topics that will interest the school community into reading and craving for more information. This is because; the information will be display in a fun, creative and understandable way in order to appeal to the student’s styles of learning. The visual aspect will not only benefit secondary level students, but also elementary. The magazine is a way to genuinely continue learning beyond the classroom and creating communicative skills through words. La Voix, immerses itself not only in interesting information, but the usage and importance of language as well. Since the magazine will be published in English, this fact will encourage students into using the language in order to understand what they are reading. They will not only be exposed to English, because other languages will be integrated inside the English magazine creating an intrigue of what other languages they can learn. Another benefit that this magazine will bring is the usage of the library’s facility. The engagement of parents supporting students’ achievements behaviors and abilities will also be part of the benefit this special project will bring. Through this magazine teachers will have the opportunity to recognize not only their best disciples but the ones that are overcoming difficulty. The students will be able to excel in many aspects such as best grades, overcoming students, special talents, outstanding work (poetry, essay, drawings, etc.) and more.
Miss. Clemente (2014)
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Practice Teaching: Special Project
This magazine will be a great boost for morale in school. Motivating students into being part of this process creates and promotes leadership. It also promotes acceptance of the diversity that exists not only in the school community, but also in the world. This magazine will be the voice of the student
Miss. Clemente (2014)
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Practice Teaching: Special Project
Permanence The permanence of this project will be guided and supervised by me for the rest of the year. I have compromised to continue for the entire year developing the volumes of the magazine. The work team will be composed by me as the supervisor and editor (for now). Students will be the scouts seeking interesting topics and stories. English teachers will be seeking for outstanding work of students in order to publish them. Showing the ropes to a team of students and teachers that are interested within this area will be the sign for me leaving them to work on their own. I will create a template that they can use and edit the way they want, so it’s easier for them to develop the other volumes. Of course, improving the template will be advised because the idea of the magazine is to always be dynamic and fun. Since La Voix wants to promote the conservation of the environment the publishing of the magazine will be via internet where is accessible to everyone. There will be hard copies in important areas such as the library, director’s office and if anyone wants a hard copy they will have to purchase it. The money they pay will be for the reproduction of the magazine this way we do not waste, paper, ink and money. Therefore, we do not only protect the environment but our pockets as well.
Miss. Clemente (2014)
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Practice Teaching: Special Project
Action Plan The publication of the first volume of La Voix magazine is to be expected on December. Since we will create it per semester (it may change) students will have time to develop their best work and search for ideas they want to present. Teachers will also be able to collect all the outstanding work their students have created. All this information will be collected weekly. The first step is to promote the project among the school community to attract more students, teachers and parents into collaborating with this magazine (this promotion will start on September 26, 2014). After the first meeting, on September 30, 2014 dates will be set in order to recollect information and start the editing of the magazine. The time distribution should be at least 1 hour and a half in order to discuss ideas and recollect information. At the same time editing will be taking place if suggestions appear. Preferably the library will be used for the meetings (collection of information and discussion of ideas). The editing will be on my personal time and then it will be presented to the team in order to make changes if necessary and suggested. Action Plan Table Dates
Sept. 26, 2014
Sept. 30, 2014
Time
Meetings
Distribution
(# and place)
Activity Hour 10:20 am 3:00 pm
None
Meeting #1 -Library
Ideas or Activities
Promotion Presentation of the magazine, setting activities and deadlines. Brainstorming.
The other dates will be presented after the first meeting.
Miss. Clemente (2014)
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Practice Teaching: Special Project
Results The objectives of the magazine were partially met because even though the magazine is creative, diverse, educational and fun it was not created by the students. A lot of the English teachers failed to hand in students projects, essays and other types of outstanding assignments and students kept insisting they would bring their work, but they forgot as well. Luckily, some teachers like me and another English teacher documented students work. Some students did provide assignments, drawings and projects to be published in this magazine. However, the time line was not in our favor and students didn’t seem to have extra time to spend in school designing and bringing idea of what they wanted to do in the magazine. The people responsible for the success of this project were: Angelica Medina (Biology Major Student), Mrs. Tellez (4th-6th grade English teacher), and myself. I had to visit each English teacher in order to collect student’s work and continuously document via pictures or file the work of my group. They way I altered my action plan was after scouting students and promoting the project to every group at the intermediate level. Additional information and images were searched in the internet and then adapted and summarized for the students by the practice teacher (me). The practice teacher was also, the pictures taken of the students, scanning their work, and publishing it. The editing was worked out by Angelica Medina and the practice teacher and some of the students assignments were provided by Mrs. Telles. In order for the magazine to be published in time Angelica and I had a meeting were the designing began for the first volume of the magazine. She offered to help for the next semester so we will be expecting a second volume as promised. Miss. Clemente (2014)
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Practice Teaching: Special Project
Reactions Even though, the design of the magazine looks simple it was not. It took many hours and days of designing, editing and selecting the information and pictures that were going to be included. It wasn’t just a copy and paste, we literally had to read in order to assess that the information that we were providing was trustworthy and that the way it was presented was attractive for the students. The implementation of the magazine was a great idea for everyone, including the director, but it was hard to get students involve in the project and most of all teachers. Continuously, I had to remind them to hand in students work, and they seem to forget all the time with all the work they had. The Special Project affected me in positive and negative ways. The negatives factors were: time frame, student’s and teacher’s collaboration. It seems almost impossible to gather students to help in the creation of the magazine without mentioning the constant reminder to teachers to hand in some student’s work in order for them to be published in the first volume of the magazine. Since there were no more leaders in this project it was difficult handling everything that needed to be done. Time frame was hardest factor for the creation of the magazine. The positive factors were: good publication, experience, creativity, legacy and completion of the requirements of my practice teaching. Even though time was not on our side, Angelica and I managed to start the first volume of the magazine in a fun and creative way. Even though, there is space for improvement we feel proud of our first publication so satisfaction is present. The experience factor helped me understand that managing a publication like this requires more than collecting pictures and fragments of information. It also requires research and Miss. Clemente (2014)
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Practice Teaching: Special Project
investigation, preselecting what can work best for the audience and deciding what of all the information that has been gathered will be published at the end. Creativity was engaged in the design of the magazine and that is always a fun and satisfactory part of projects like this. The legacy is what I leave to this school and promise to continue during the second semester. As a requirement of my practice teaching experience I was ask to create a special project for my school and the requirement was fulfilled.
Miss. Clemente (2014)
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Practice Teaching: Special Project
Recommendations If I could do it all over again I would start the promotion of the special project earlier and the collection of material as well. When recruiting the students, I would recommend offering them to sign their community hours as long as they fulfilled their assignments with the special project. That way students start seeing it like a fun way to complete their hours. There are many students from high school that complete their hours as well, so they can also be part of the project and help out with the design and gathering of information. I would recommend other teachers to be very jealous with time, because it may seem like much, but it disappears quickly. The creation of a magazine template is something that needs to be taught of and proposing a magazine like I did takes a lot of work because it includes many topics. If another practice teacher wants to try it, they can improve it by directing the magazine only to a certain level and topic like their practice group.
Miss. Clemente (2014)
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Practice Teaching: Special Project
Appendix Letter for recruiting personnel (students and teachers)………………………A Magazine cover and link……………………………………………………..B
Miss. Clemente (2014)
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