May 26, 2011: My internship at Mapleton Junior High ended.

Here are a few pictures from my internship.  I wish I would have taken a lot more pictures of class activities that we had, but I wasn't really sure about the regulations for taking pictures of students.  So, mostly I just took pictures while they weren't there.  :)  Anyway, this is just a very small glimpse into the events of the year.

This was the motto for the school where I did my internship.

I felt so official when my name went up outside the room.

Empty classroom before school started.

Bringing in some of my books.

Trying to get things organized.

Classroom library semi-organized.

Close-up of tree Mike and I made for my classroom.

Fall version of tree.

Over the summer I got some books donated from donorschoose.org, and I had to put together a thank-you package with photos that show how the donations were put to use.  So, since I didn't have pictures of the students, I took some screenshots from one of my observation videos.  :)  So, here is one of my students reading.

One of my students reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

This is how my students decorated our door for Red Ribbon Week.  My class won  the "Most Clever" award and $30 for a class party.  :)

Close-up on the artwork.  :)

The theme for the year was influence, and each term we had an "essential question" relating to our projects for the unit.  "How are we influenced by others?" "How are we influenced by ideas?" "How are we influenced by the past?" and "How can we influence others?"

The colors on the wall were part of a project we did while reading The Giver.  The  black and white posters represent Jonas' society, and the colors outside represent the memories he starts to receive about all of the diversity that there used to be/could be in the world outside.

Covered up colorful calendar I had underneath.

Covered up previous classroom rules about respect.

More authoritarian version of our normal classroom rules to imitate the strict rules in Jonas' society.

Students wrote concrete and abstract associations they have with all of the colors for a group activity and then I cut up the papers to put them on the wall.

A few more examples.

These are from a project we did while reading The Devil's Arithmetic.  Students  learned about the  meaning of their names and then made rip-art projects that would visually symbolize their name's meaning.

One of the choices for book projects, a "book float" that represents the elements of fiction in their  individual reading books.  One of the main purposes of this assignment was to help promote and share the books they read with their classrooms.

Some more examples.

Good old book mobiles!

Kind of a crazy display I made at the beginning of year.

A couple of my students decorated my room with a few Jimmer Fredette signs as a "random act of kindness" they were supposed to do for someone when we were reading Stargirl as a class.  :)

Classroom at the end of the year.

Farewell shot of my door.

Good-bye class!  Bittersweet memories!