Blog Entry #8

"What is the most important thing you have learned in this class?"

I think that the most important thing I have learned throughout the duration of this class is all the behind the scenes things you don't automatically think of when you think of being a teacher. I think at first being a teacher would sound fun to just about anyone. Especially if you like kids. Or at least it has always been something that has sounded fun to me. It was a nice reminder to be shown that there is a not so pretty reality that goes along with being a teacher. That there are responsibilites that come with the job that you may not have automatically thought of. Like parent meetings of unruly children, or recess duty, or long meetings and conferences. But i'm happy to say that even after learning about all those extra things i'm still confident in the fact that being an Elementary School teacher is what I want to do. Even with those not so fun things it still is so worth it to me to be able to be a teacher.

I honestly found this whole course interesting and it got me excited to be a teacher and start the process. Learning about all the fundamentals and teaching standards, as boring as that all sounds, was actually quite interesting and exciting because it's making this more real to me instead of just saying I want to be a teacher I am becoming a teacher.

Last but not least, something that was more beneficial to me than anything was the field work. Actually being there and seeing how teaching is going ot be and how to handle things really made the difference and also made everything worth while. Being able to interact with the children taught me so much about teaching and even about myself. It was so much fun and such a great learning experience to get out there and throw myself into it, even if it was just for a couple of hours a week. Teaching, just like almost everything is something that I think you are just going to have to pick up as you go along. The longer you do it and the more experiences and situations you are in the better knowledged you will become and the better you will be able to handle things. You'll learn what techniques you like the best and what works best for your own individual classes and individual students.

This class has been a great introduction and I truly am so grateful I have taken it to further my drive to become a teacher. 

Blog Entry #7

"What are the classroom rules?/How are the materials organized?"

In the class I do my field work for the rules are fairly standard and basic. Things like; Treat others how you want to be treated, always raise your hand, keep your space clean, be respectful so on and so forth. Nothing to out of the norm. She does have a system for when the students break the rules though, which is still a pretty standard procedure. If they break a rule once its a verbal warning. If they break a rule twice they have to go stand outside. If they break a rule three times they have to take a note home to their parents and have it signed, and if they break a rule four times they call their parents right there. I always felt like this wasn't a very good way to handle things because the students probably don't really believe that you will follow through. But I am telling you once they see it happen to one kid in the class they do not want to be that kid that's for sure.

Something that I really like and relate to the teacher I help is how organized she is. Anyone who knows me knows that  I am a complete clean freak. I'm the kind of person who has a label maker and a place for everything. Not only do I have a place for everything, I have a binder that tells me where that exact place is just in case I happen to forget. She may not be quite as organized as that but as far as her classroom goes it is pretty neat and organized. She has stations around the room for every kind of category. Like for example there is an art section and a library section and a magazine section, its just all laid out really well and always kept tidy. Another thing I like that she does is that she switches up the seating arrangment in her classroom a lot. She's constantly moving their seats and their positions almost every other week. She says that she likes to do this beacuse it helps them meet more people and sit next to new people, but that she also every once in awhile will let them pick who they are going to sit by, but that that will generally lead to mass chaos if she's not careful. She, like me, is realy into change and not keeping things boring and normal. She's always looking for new ways to teach, new activies, new anything to keep things fresh and exciting not only for herself but for the students as well.



Blog Entry #5

"What strategies does the teacher use to actively engage the student and how effective are these strategies?"

There are a couple of things the teacher does to make sure the students are actively engaged that I am really fond of. One of them is she does the names on the popsicle sticks, so that when she asks a question she just draws a stick out to see who is going to answer. When I was in elementary school I know I hated this. I never wanted to be the one who was called on, but now looking at it from a teacher perspective I think its a really smart way to do things. Students don't want to get the answer wrong, or at least I know that I didn't want to because I would have been embarrassed and felt bad. So by having that little pressure that it might be them thats called on I think it keeps everyone on guard and paying more attention than they would be if they knew someone could just raise their hand.

Another thing she likes to do is that when she can see everyone is losing focus and getting a little bored she tries to improve a physical activity to go with her lesson. Even if its just doing a lap around the school and having them point things out that go along with what their learning. Or going outside and playing some kind of game. She just likes to bring a little bit of fun into situations but still make sure they are learning and staying on track. One example of this is that they were learning about multiplication and working on their math, you could tell everyone was not  fan. So she decided to walk around the school and have a scavenger hunt to see who could find the most numbers and or math symbols and whoever got the most got a little treat. It sounds so simple but they were all so excited to get up and walk around and stop staring at paper even if it was just for 5 minutes. 

Blog Entry #5

I think the most challenging role a teacher plays is being the authoritative figure. To me I would want my students to like me and look up to me, but there also has to be a level of respect their as well. They need to know that even though you are their to help them you also need to make sure they know that you are still the boss and are in complete control. I don't want them to think they can walk all over me.

When talking to the teacher I volunter for she agreed with me that this is a really hard role you have to play, but she said what she feels is even harder is all the extra stuff you don't realize you have to deal with. Things like angry parents and bullys. She said she's had a really hard time with a couple student who have been bullys and that dealing with that as well as dealing with their parents has been a real struggle for her.

This lesson made me realize theres so much more to being a teacher than just teaching. There's meetings and early mornings and late nights and recess duty and just a bunch of stuff that you don't neccessarily think of when you think of a teacher. Not that any of it is bad stuff, its just stuff you should probably take into consideration when making the choice for this to be your career. You need to realize all of the aspects of the job and that its not always going to be fun, or that it might even rarely be fun. Even though it may not always be fun I do honestly think at the end of the day it will be rewarding. 

Blog Entry #4

"How do your teacher manage assessment"

This topic actually came up a couple weeks ago before I actually started this module, but it was interseting to learn my teacher's point of view of assessment. The teacher I help is really into using pre tests and then post test surveys to not only see the assesment of the results but to assess her teaching method in general and see if there's anything she could modify to make it better for her students.

She always starts out by giving a pre test that has questions that are somewhat similiar concepts to that which will be on the actual test. She always closely compares this information to the actual test and answers to see the areas of improvement and the areas that weren't improved which I think is really smart. She told me this greatly helps her understand what concepts she needs to teach better and that she can then alter her teaching method and then see how it goes next time and compare again.

My favorite thing she does in terms of assesment though is she always does a post test survey just to ask the students how good they felt about all the information and if there is anyway to make them feel more confident in it. She said that sometimes you don't get anything to really go off of from them but that sometimes they can have great suggestions on new activites and methods to their learning that they will try together in class.

I also asked her if she keeps track of the standards of learning well and how often she is checking to see if her students are reaching their yearly goals. She said that its definitely something she should be better at but that she tries to go through them often and evalutae what standards need more time and which ones have been acheived. She wasn't really confident in how good she is at this so that makes me want to make sure that when i'm a teacher i'm staying on top of those standards and constantly checking and making sure my students are on top of things. I want to give them the best opportunities and learning advantages possible and I truly think that will be easiest for them when they have a good solid foundation from year to year.

 



Blog Post # 3

"What modifications for learners who are exceptional do you see"

 

This question was a little harder for me to see in my actual school field work time setting, and a little bit easier for me to see in my own personal life. My husband has ADD and most of his brother's have ADD or ADHD so i'm used to it in that kind of setting. In my actual field work setting I ended up asking my teacher who, if any of the students, had learning disabilites and it turns out that in the class I was helping with there was only one boy who they thought might be a bit dyslexic. This suprised me becuase I thought I would be able to automatically be able to point out any kids with learning disabilities but he seemed just like the rest to me.

I asked her what kinds of things she does to help him more in his day to day activites and she gave me a pretty long list of things she does that are fairly simple, but seem to have a huge impact on him and his learning. Some of them are:

- Giving him lots of handouts and typed up sheets so he doesn't have to copy as much

- When he does have to copy of the board she tries to write in a multitude of colors

- She always checks his written work to make sure he did get it down correctly

- She gives him a check list to check off everynight to ensure he gets everything done

- She makes sure he's seated relatively near her so she can make sure he's doing okay and paying attention.

All of these things seem so little and not very important but from what she explained to me it really has made a big difference in his learning and understanding. He's done better on tests and is improving on his actual reading and writing skills. It just goes to show how just a little effort can go such a long way and really help a child in need.



"Tell about an opportunity working with a small group"

Last week when I was down at the Elementary school the class I help got the opportunity to go to the library. When they went to the library they were read a short book and then got a little paper with questions to answer about the story they had just been read. They were allowed to seperate off into pairs or groups or work alone if they wanted. I got to just walk around and see if anyone needed help, it was extremely interesting to see what kind of groups had formed.

When you're a kid and picking groups I don't believe you really think all that much about it, you choose you're friends and move on. It was interseting to see the people who were not automatically grouped up and what kinds of groups were actually formed. Most of the groups had 3 or 4 kids who were obviously friends and acted very similar, but then you'd get groups of people who hadn't automatically known what group to be in. I found these groups to be the most interesting, it was a more diverse group of kids who in the end probably learned better because they all had very different opinions.

This was really interesting to me because it still goes to show that to some sense their is "discrimination" not that these kids are really doing it on purpose but its still somewhat there. Something else I also noted from this activity is that its probably better to assign groups, because the groups who ended up being just the wish wash of kids left behind learned a lot more from the activity from the other kids who just grouped together with their friends and didn't really work as hard.

Blog Entry #1:

"What Developmental Differences do you see in the children in the classroom?"

 

When doing my "out on the field" hours this week there was one thing that defintely suprised me right off the back. Just from spending about 10 to 15 minutes observing these kids you could tell so much about them. The first little while I was there I was simply just observing them as they worked in groups. Especially in groups it was so easy to see who has more dominant personalities and who kind of shyed back and let other people take charge. So much about them showed just through the way they reacted with the other children.
Another thing I saw was that in this group activity they were using multiple kinds of learning strategies. For their group activity they were reading this article in this little magazine and then answering some questions about it. They started by taking turns reading aloud to each other which would qualify as "auditory" learning. Along with the article was a whole bunch of pictures which would qualify as "visual" learning. Finally once they were all done with the reading and had answered the questions, each group had to put on a performance of sorts to replay what they had read about in their specific article which I qualify as "kinesthetic" learning. It was interesting to actually see a concept I had learned played out in real life.
After the lesson was over I was discussing with the teacher what I observed and she explained that over the past 10 years of teaching she'd read a lot about it and found that the children remember and relate the best when you do activites that involve all 3 learning styles. It was such a fun experience to get to see how the kids interacted and how actual classroom life is like. Just makes me more and more excited about whats to come!