My first two weeks of student teaching have gone rather well. It's been great getting to know the students, teachers, and staff at the school. My cooperating teacher is really great. I like that she's very calm. Also, we have a very good rapport and we're able to discuss complicated and difficult topics positively, professionally, and effectively. My biggest observation so far has been how my misjudgement of student's ability levels in English. I've been used to working with adults. With them, one can get a general thumbnail sketch of their English proficiency from a brief conversation.
As a borad, general rule, adult students' accent and fluency usually correlates nicely with their ability level. When I started working with younger students, I was impressed with the felicity of expression in their speaking. I assumed their English knowledge was quite high. However, after these two weeks, I've found that not to be the case. Younger students might speak fluently and have virtually no accents, but they seem to have large gaps in knowledge. I'm interested to see how this strand unfolds during the rest of my student teaching.