Kristy Chimera
MED300
Journal 2

	Well this week at Lafayette didn’t go exactly as planned. It is really hard to get caught up once you get behind. We are still a full day behind schedule, and I’m not sure if the material that we have been teaching has been sinking in with the students. They are having a test tomorrow, and I’m not sure they are ready for it. Most of the test questions are word problems. Today, instead of starting lesson 3, we ended up going over another word problem at Mr. Koestler’s request, to get them ready for the test tomorrow. This would’ve been fine, and a nice warm-up exercise, except that it took us about 25 minutes to complete one word problem as a class. When we go slowly through the problems, and explain (or have the students explain) what steps we took, the students seem to understand. If they do not understand, then we explain it until they do understand. Except when we start a new word problem, or if they try one on their own, they get stuck. I am concerned for the test tomorrow. I can only hope that they go through the steps slowly and check their work.
	Having students who do not want to participate is not helping either. Jose just sat in the back of the group and did not want to participate today. When Nichole or I went over to him and tried to get him to participate he just sat there and didn’t say anything. However, towards the end of the class we finally started lesson 3 which is solving equations with variables on both sides of the equation, and Jose finally started to participate. He started answering questions when we asked the class what steps we should take to solve the problem. I’m not sure if he just can’t do word problems, or was bored with them or what, but he seemed to turn his attitude around just a little once we started the new topic. Hopefully, he will continue to participate and pay attention.
	I hope we can get caught up next week. We really haven’t gotten to do anyone’s activities in their lesson plans. We just have not had the time. We were supposed to do a sticky note activity today, but since that word problem took way longer than anticipated, we had to skip it. I think if we did do some games or activities, it might keep the students’ attention longer, so I really hope we can finally fit one in next week.