Third Visit - Fourth Grade

This blog is from Mrs. Boyer's classroom.
I will be talking about rules in the classroom and how they are enforced.
Mrs. Boyer allows kids to have fun in her class, and mainly only provides rules for saftey and to help transitions go quickly.
One example of a rule that they have for safety purposes is that no one can sit or stand on the stage that they have unless they are giving a report. I have only seen this rule disobeyed once, and all Mrs. Boyer had to do was to politely remind the child that they are not supposed to be sitting on the sage, and they got off.
One example of a transition that I have seen is when they get in a line. She says "lines" three times, and then begins counting. On the board they have a number of the current lowest time that it has taken them.. However, if the children run to the door or are unsafe about it, she adds time. This keeps them safe, but motivates them to quickly clean up.

Third Visit - First Grade

This was my third visit to Mrs. Wood's class.
In this visit, I was able to interact with the kids during their work time more.
Today I am going to talk about what I've learned during this fieldwork observation.
I learned that there are pros and cons to every age group. You just need to pick which ones you are most willing to deal with and which ones you don't want to have in your life. I learned that first graders have a lot of energy, and teaching them in big groups proves to be difficult because they are always moving and rarely listening. However, they are really good with routines, and are willing to stay on task in small groups. There is also a large amount of planning for this age group.
The sixth graders were more likely to stay on task in all settings, but you have to teach them more complex concept that take longer. While I have the knowledge for this, it is hard for me to stay on task during these times.
This helped me to get to know different teaching styles as well as teaching me what I do or don't like about teaching different age groups.

Second Visit - Sixth Grade

Today I was in the room of Mr  Harward.
I will be talking about the important roles that teachers play.
The role that I believe is the most important is student interaction. When you stay getting into college classes, there begins to be less and less interaction and more and more lecturing.However,  I believe it is the interactions that give understanding.
In Mr.  Harward' s class today,  we went over math with algebraic equations, and he and I both had to help many kids with this understanding. This took a lot of involvement from both of us,  proving it is an important role.

Second Visit - Fourth Grade

Today I was back in the room of Mrs. Boyer.
I will be talking about what strategies the teacher uses to actively engage the student.
Mrs. Boyer has always been good at engaging the students. She believes on a lot of hands on work for the kids. Today, I got to see this with iPads.
It was math time when I went in, and all of the kids were going around the room with iPads. They had scannable QR codes that would give them one of the questions that they had to do, and space for them to write it out and figure it out. Then you would submit your answer.
The children seemed to enjoy this over sitting in your seat doing math, but they still were focused and doing what they should the entire time. I feel like this was very successful.

Second Visit - First Grade

Today I was back in the classroom of Mrs. Woods.
I am going to be talking about what preparatory work I have helped with in the classroom.
When I go into the classroom, it is around the time when the PM kids are getting into the classroom, so I help with keeping track of them most of the time while Mrs. Woods prepares the next part of her lesson. However, this last time, she decided to trade roles with me, and to let me participate in getting things ready for the children.
I helped to get a PowerPoint ready on the difference between proper nouns and regular nouns. After I finished that, I found the papers that were needed for the kids to do and made sure that there were enough copies of it. It gave me a little bit of a sense of pride when I knew that the kids were going to be learning from something that I had helped to create.

First Visit - Sixth Grade

For my third and final first classroom visit, I went to a sixth grade classroom. The teacher that I went to is Mr. Harward. Seven years ago, he was my teacher.
For this blog, I am going to talk about a time when I was able to work with a small group of children and about how the schools are different now then they were in the past.
When I was in the classroom this time, I was able to work with children to read and summarize a section of the book Homer Price. This was very enjoyable for me because of how much I love this book. We took turns reading the chapter out loud. When we came up to confusing to say words or words that aren't common, I would pause the group and have them try to figure out what the word could mean. After we finished, I had the kids say what they thought the most important parts of that chapter would be, and then we voted on which ones should belong to our summary sheet.
I realized how different that the schools run now partially to the book that we were reading. As the children get younger and younger, they know less and less of the culture that existed when books like that were written. It was also different due to technology. And finally, it was different based on races. In the class, there were white people, African-Americans, Mexican, and a Japanese girl. That never would have happened in the past.

First Visit - Fourth Grade

This was my second visit to this elementary school. This time, I was in a fourth grade classroom. The teacher that I was with this time was Mrs. Boyer. I spent half of the time in the classroom, and for the other half, I went with the kids to a music center in a different area of the school.
For this blog, I'm going to talk about what modifications for exceptional students I saw in this classroom.
In this class, there is a kid named Alex who is an exceptional student. He has a hard time focusing, with noise, and being social. I am not sure what disability he has, but I know that he has one. Because of this, the teachers spend extra time making sure he gets from one area to the next safely and with the class. They also make things like the music area more of an option for him. Sometimes, he will participate in the activities. Other times, he will sit to the side just watching everyone else. During this, though, they make sure that they have certain rules for him to follow, just like everyone else.