8th Grade History Observation

I was very excited about this assignment. I enjoy going into the classroom and being able to observe what is going on and how everyone interacts with each other. I decided to attend a classroom at an expulsion school that has 4th- 12th grade students. Every student has a different story of why they are they at this school, some students made a mistake and want to earn their way back to their school site and some do not care about school and to not try to work towards anything positive. The staff explained that working there is a challenge and takes a special type of person that can adjust to a variety of challenging students and still try to accomplish a positive learning environment. I decided to observe the 8th grade history class for an entire chapter. I wanted to get the full experience from the start of the lesson to testing and see how the whole lesson is presented, delivered and received from start to finish. The text book used is United States History: Independence to 1914. I sat in when the students were learning about the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The book seemed difficult for some students to read and comprehend. There was an aide in the classroom at all times. I sat in a class with 31 students in it and 12 of them had an IEP, 504 plan or BSP. The teacher and aide were constantly walking around and helping the students with a diverse set of challenges. Some students I could see clearly could not read the book. The level of reading was considerably lower that what the textbook was. I could see there were students with a 2nd grade reading level trying to read a 8th grade textbook. There was also one student who caught my eye because he had a one on one aide. The first day of class the teacher passes out a page that is front and back. This has a few vocabulary words that are in the text and has sentences from the text with blanks within the sentences. The student is to read through the text and fill in the blanks and define the vocabulary words. Most students are able to complete this task without help. It took them to look in the glossary or dictionary and copy the definition. The student with a one on one aide did not have the skills to find the words alphabetically. He needed assistance finding the words and then was able to copy the words down on the page. The teacher and aide continued to walk around with the class and that kept everyone on task. I thought this was a good idea and the students seemed to know what to do and got right to work. They are allowed to work in a group of two or independently. The students that seemed serious about getting the work done worked independently. The students who worked â€Å"smarter not harder† split to front and back pages and then copied so that they could finish and have free time. The second day of class was for the students to finish their sheet of work. The students that already finished earned free time. I saw this was a distraction for the students who were still working. They were constantly looing at the students that had free time and could not focus on the job they needed to complete. A few students rushed through their work to earn free time. I did not notice anyone checking their completed work. After this class knowing that all the students were finished I asked the teacher if I could see the answer key and review the students work. He gladly granted my request. Out of 30 students, only 5 students did a great job and it showed in their work that they cared about getting a good grade and had little to no incorrect answers. More than half of the students clearly did not care and wrote in bogus answers. The few that were left copied each other’s work and clearly did not care about what was written. The third day of class the students traded papers and corrected their work with the teacher. He went through every question and had them write in the correct answer if they got it wrong. This was the first time I saw interaction between the teacher and the students. There was no conversation about the information and how this may apply to the students today. The correction of the two sided paper took the whole hour period, mainly because the students were uninterested and wasted a lot of time talking. It was almost like the students did not know how to behave when the teacher was in front of the class. After the students were done correcting their work the teacher collected the papers and recorded their grades. The next day, which was day 4 and the 4th hour of instruction on this lesson, the teacher passed out their work with the correct answers and a similar paper that read â€Å"test†. This format was the same as the assignment and had sentences from the text with blanks for the student to write the correct answer completing the sentence. I reviewed the test and see that the answer or black portion for the student to fill in was the question in the assignment. The question in the assignment was the answer or blank portion in the test. The whole concept seemed a little easy for this age and to be honest very boring and redundant. The next day the teacher had the students watch a history movie on the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The movie had more interest to the kids than the assignment that week. I was disappointed with the teaching aspect of this class. The teacher said he feels this â€Å"packet method† gets through the material and is repetitious for the kids to learn the material. I felt the kids were bored and had no desire to read the material. These kids especially strive for attention and most of the times do not have positive interactions with adults. The Constitution and Bill of Rights is a LARGE part of our history and after this week these kids did not have a better understanding or respect for our country and the rights they take for granted. The teacher and the children were not involved with each other at all with exception to correcting the assignment together. There are many things I would do differently. I would first, to get their attention, had out a blank piece of paper and ask them to make their own rights and make their own Constitution. I would have them do this to grab their interest in the lesson. These kids are more interested in what they think and what they want than anything else so I would use that and ask them what they want. I would then let them speak to the class about what they feel like they should have as right and why. This would teach the kids to respect the student speaking and also teach the kids courage to get up and speak in front of a group of their peers without using foul language. I would want to spark up a conversation about right and how important they are to each and every person. After that I would use the study guide the teacher created and read and answer the study guide as a class. I would also relate the lesson to what the students wrote in their own Bill of Rights. This was a great learning experience for me as an aspiring teacher. I would want more interaction within my classroom and my students. The students were very diverse in the aspect of some wanting to work, some not caring about the work, some unable to do work and some tweeners. I think having control of the classroom is the key in this environment. Being in front of the students and showing them you care about this and they should too, this is the philosophy I would do every day in class. I would have very little time in this environment where the student has the option when they are finished they would have free time. The only incentive there is the quicker you finish the quicker you can do whatever you want. I would have different incentives and a more positive environment that the kids could participate in with me, the teacher, the leader and their peers. In this type of school I feel with the curriculum you are also teaching life skills that they have not had the privilege of learning in their home environment. I cannot wait to have my own classroom and see the outcome of constant interaction and having the students give their personality to the lesson and assignments.

This is England as British Social Realism Film Research Paper

This is England as British Social Realism Film - Research Paper Example Social Realism in British Films First of all, let us find out what realism in general is. Realism has been defined by Armes: â€Å"In its broadest sense, realism is an attitude of mind, a desire to adhere strictly to the truth, recognition that man is a social animal, and a conviction that he is inseparable from his position in a society† (Armes 17). Artistically, Social Realism is a term that can be applied to the arts in general. Namely, as an artistic movement that found its expression in various arts, social realism focuses portraying issues related to social injustice or racial intolerance, with emphasis on protest against the depicted unjustness often conveyed with the help of satire. It is worth mentioning that social realism in visual and some other arts focuses on the issues related to the life and activity of the working class. In films, social realism is perceived as a style that evolved from the 20th century movement of Italian neorealism. Lay observes that one of the key features of this style is its providing an intricate link between the character and the place to enable exploring a certain aspect of modern life in a way that is very similar to naturalism (Lay 9). According to Williams, the pivotal characteristics of the films/texts representing British Social Realism are: 1) its secular character. In other words, social realist texts are devoid of mysticism and appeal wholly to logic and ability to reason. Consequently, such texts/films come to focus on depicting human truths rather than divine truths 2) the grounding of social issues, characters, and films’ settings in the context of contemporary reality. 3) the social extension aspect. To specify, â€Å"realist texts tend to expand the range of characters to include marginal or previously under-represented groups and issues in society† (Williams 61-74) 4) the intent of the artist that is often politically colored. To illustrate, the filmmaker’s intent in British Soc ial Realism may have reformist, socially purposive, as well as educative underpinnings (Lay 13). As for the contents of the films representing the discussed genre, the latter usually revolve around certain issues and themes. To distinguish between issues and themes within the film referred to as a social realist one, one needs to bear in mind the major difference between them: the issues are of explicit nature – they are easily recognized and visible fears and concerns currently troubling the society; while themes are usually implied and â€Å"hide† within a given text. As Lay rightfully observes, â€Å"Themes work on a much deeper level and represent less obvious threats to social cohesion and stability† (Lay 14). In addition, in terms of its contents, the social realist film will most likely deal with the issues of drugs, poverty, prostitution, sex, alcoholism, as well as crime. All in all, if one were to name the important features of a film representing Brit ish social realism, he/she would probably come up with the following list: realistic portrayal of the society the Britishmen live in Life’s struggles Realistic events, contexts, situations, and realistic settings Filming techniques that may be classified as believable Unknown actors Heroes representing

Business Management Techniques Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Business Management Techniques - Assignment Example Costing accuracy is the main advantage of this type of activity. Companies allocate cost simply to the products that involve production activities. Hence this activity helps in eliminating allocation of costs that are irrelevant to the product. Other benefits of this type of activity to the business include an easy understanding of cost for inside administration, the potentiality to facilitate benchmarking and a better appreciative of overhead costs. This system of costing also supports the management performance and the scorecard. Besides these, this type of costing does integrate well with programs put in place for continuous improvements by the company.This method is widely used by companies in allocating its cost, the challenging part is the implementation. Putting into practice this kind of costing system within a company involves considerable resources. This can be a disadvantage for businesses with inadequate funds. Another challenge of using this costing method is that it can be misinterpreted. Based on our scenario of production of manual and automatic data, we can identify various issues arising. For instance a decrease in production volume from 1500 to 500, the cost of direct material increased from â‚ ¬20@unit to â‚ ¬30@unit, a clear indicator that the costing of this is very accurate. Under the activity based production analysis of the company, we can see differences in the packaging and delivery cost. The differences that occur between the packaging and delivery is due to activity-based costing.... This means that this system of costing is inaccurate in relation to increasing over head cost. This has made Activity based costing to become an alternative replacement to the traditional method in allocation of cost (Drury, 70). Advantages of Activity based costing Costing accuracy is the main advantage of this type of activity. Companies allocate cost simply to the products that involve production activities. Hence this activity helps in eliminating allocation of costs that are irrelevant to the product. Other benefits of this type of activity to the business include easy understanding of cost for inside administration, the potentiality to facilitate benchmarking and a better appreciative of overhead costs. This system of costing also supports the management performance and the scorecard. Besides these, this type of costing does integrate well with programs put in place for continuous improvements by the company (Drury, 120). Although this method is widely used by companies in allo cating its cost, the challenging part is the implementation. Putting into practice this kind of costing system within a company involves considerable resources. This can be a disadvantage for businesses with inadequate funds. Another challenge of using this costing method is that it can be misinterpreted. Based on our scenario of production of manual and automatic data, we can identify various issues arising. For instance a decrease in production volume from 1500 to 500, the cost of direct material increased from â‚ ¬20@unit to â‚ ¬30@unit, a clear indicator that the costing of this is very accurate. Under the activity based production analysis of the company, we can see differences in the packaging and delivery