Last week/ Final Post

So we had our last day in the field this week :( I am really going to miss my kids!!! I had an absolute great field experience this semester. I believe that Spann is a fantastic school, and one in which I would love the opportunity to work in one day. My cooperating teacher was also fantastic because she not only taught me a lot about classroom management, but she also did a great job involving Kerri and I into the classroom. She always had us doing special one-on-one projects with the kids and that really helped form a bond between us.

I learned two really big things this semester from being in the field and from our field class.

1 - Family involvement and family knowledge is vital to really understanding a child.

and 2 - When you teach your children good classroom management skills from the get go, the whole rest of the year will run more smoothly.

I really enjoyed the family assignment we had this semester! I was nervous about it at first, and had my doubts about how relevant it would be. BUT after going and witnessing the child's family life, I realized just how much their home environment plays out into their school life. I had a whole new understanding of the child from just being within her home setting for a few hours. It would be great if the opportunity was there to visit with every child in your class, but of course the time aspect would play a huge role in that not being possible. I definitely want to reach out to all parents when I become a teacher, and let them know that we really are a team and that I would love to have as much communication between as possible.

My cooperating teacher had the keys to what classroom management really are. I wish I could have been there in the first few weeks to see what she had done. (or if the children in her class are really that well behaved on their own). I do believe the children were pretty good on their own, but I know without a doubt that it is the way my teacher respected and loved each and every child that made all the difference in the world. I only witnessed positive reinforcement inside her classroom. When negative behavior did happen, she was quick to correct it in private and providing a real explanation as to why the behavior was not expectable. She really did a fantastic job relating to her students and having them feel that they were an important part to her classroom and that their behavior was noticed and appreciated. I always heard her complementing students when they were doing the "right thing" such as standing in line properly, or sitting on the carpet quietly. She always let her students know exactly what she expected from them, and then reinforced it when they did it. She set her children up to succeed! I believe all her children knew how much she respected them, and loved them, and they therefore toke it upon themselves to act they way that was desired by her. I have never been inside a classroom, let alone a kindergarten classroom, where the children were so independent, on task and well behaved! It was an eye opening experience and I will definitely take all I have learned from her into my own classroom one day.

Week Ten

Last week Kerri taught her last lesson, which of course was the 90 minute one. Her lesson was great though! She taught the children a song, and had them role play like they were bears!! It was super cute and the children really seemed to enjoy it! Interactive lessons are definitely beneficial for young children and it was great that Kerri was able to produce such a lesson.

Bartel came to watch Kerri teach her lesson this week. She unfortunately had to step out just when Kerri was getting to the good part, so she had the great idea of video recording her lesson so that she could watch it later. I ran to the library to borrow a camera, came back inside the classroom, flipped it open, got about 2 minutes taped....and the battery went dead! :) It was kinda sad but the idea was great! I remember in class this semester someone brought up the idea of video recording one of our lessons as an actual assignment. I think that is definitely something that we could learn a lot from. I always think my lessons go well, so it was would very interesting for me to watch them once they are done and see if I have the same opinion then. Maybe during my clinical practice next semester I will try it out!

My "Family" meeting

So I realized this week that I never blogged about meeting with my "family"!!!

It was an absolute GREAT experience!!!! The family Kerri and I met was the family of a little girl in our kindergarten class. The mother was our point of contact and she was the sweetest lady ever! She had a very busy schedule, yet she made time to meet with us twice. Once at their home, and once at the mall. One of the most interesting things we learned from talking with her is the differences between some private and public schools. This year was the first year she sent her children to public schools, before they had gone to a private church school. She said that her son (2nd grade) had made the transition easily, but she was a little worried about her daughter (kindergarten). Her daughter had been getting in trouble a bit in class and her reasoning behind it was that she thought her daughter was bored. She told us that the things they were doing in public school kindergarten was what she had already done as a 3 year old at the private school. She had a third child who was 2 I believe and she said that she thought his homework was harder than her daughters who was in kindergarten. I know that the public school vs. private school is an on going and never ending issue. I know that there are perks and downfalls to each, yet it was definitely interesting to hear what she had to say from the mothers perspective!

Being inside the family's home really was an eye opening experinence for me. You learn SO MUCH about a child when you can step inside their world, even if only for an hour or so. It would be great to be able to do home visits with each child in your class! I know that is not liking to happen though so hopefully I can build good enough relationships with all families so that I can get a sense of what their home life might be like. Understanding the child's home life is a vitual part of understanding the child as a whole.

Week Nine - Round Two

So I just remembered two other great things I witnessed while being in the field all day last week.

The first was that I got to watch the children's overall attitudes change from being positive in the morning to slightly more negative in the afternoon. As I arrived at 7:10am all the children were so excited to see me, and so excited for their day to start. They were on task and trying their hardest for all assignments given to them. They were all friendly with each other and no real behavior issues happened. BUT as the day went on, the children became more and more tired and less and less able to focus on the tasks at hand. I noticed a huge change in two of the children, and by the end of the day one was refusing to do work, and the other had her thumb in the mouth and kept saying that she wanted her mom. Being in kindergarten all day is really hard for some of the children. I can remember that when I went to kindergarten it was only a half day program. It was just really interesting to see the progression throughout their day, and how much it really affects certain students, and how others are not affected at all.

The second thing that I thought was worth mentioning was that for the first time since I have been inside this semester's field classroom, I saw the children really misbehave and they got punished for it. All semester I have bragged and bragged about how well the teacher does with classroom management. The children really seem to respect her, and each other, and they have been really well behaved and seem to know exactly what is expected of them. Well this week things did not go as well as they usually do. The teacher was about to show the children a movie on the Smartboard because it was raining outside so they could not go out for recess. She instructed the children to sit where ever they wanted, on the carpet or seated at their desks. The kids got very excited, and a few of them decided that it would be okay to sit on top of the desks instead of in their chairs. Well this was NOT OKAY with the teacher! She immediately turned off the Smartboard and instructed all the students to go back to their seats and put their heads down on their tables. She told them that it was never okay to sit on top of the desks and that they knew better. She told them she was disappointed in them and their behavior. She made them sit there with their heads down and the lights off for about 10 minutes straight. And of course, with no surprise to me at all, each and every child listened to her right away and sat there without talking until she told them they could get up. I really wish I could have seen what the beginning of the year was like in this classroom. I know that this day was a bad day for my teacher and that she was not necessarily happy with how she handled the situation, but the point I am trying to make here is that even when the children misbehave, which of course all will at some point, her students really do seem to respect her and her authority. I could tell that they definitely did not like the fact that she was upset and disappointed with them. This classroom really does seem like a small community, and I know that the teachers and students both love and respect each other!

Week Nine

Last week was a fantastic week! I spent the ENTIRE day in the field! I have never seen a full day of school so I thought it would be a great experience for me to go and spend the entire day there. My cooperating teacher put me right to work as always! I put the students art work up onto the walls, and I helped some of the children finish some individual work that they had not completed earlier in the week. Some of the sheets had to do with color names, and others were math sheets. It was very interesting to see them do the math worksheet since I have not had a lot of experience seeing young children actually learn and do math yet. The teacher also changed things up a bit and did an entire math lesson later on in the day this week. The students were learning how to count the numbers 14, 15, and 16. She started the lesson by playing a quick game with the children on the Smartboard. The game was rolling a dice and the point was to see which group (her or her students) could get to twenty first. Of course she would count with the children each time a new number was rolled, so they had a lot of practice counting all the way to twenty. Then for the assessment she had the children go back to their tables (6 kids each) and do a worksheet with those numbers. Since there ended up being four of us "teachers" ( Kerri, I, the main teacher, and her assistant) we each toke on a group of children to help them work through the problems. My group was a bit rowdy and all over the place, but it was the end of the day so I didn't take it personally. I just had to work with them in groups of two and lead them step by step through the worksheet.

I really enjoyed spending the entire day there! I think I might do it again next week

Week Eight

This week nothing to exciting happened while we were in field. I was only there for the 3 hours this week and no one taught any lessons. One fun thing I got to do was help some of the children finish their "alphabet book". The book has a page for each letter, and each letter has a different craft. For example, H is for handprint, I got to paint the students hands and they got to make a handprint onto their paper. So on Thursday I got to help about 6 children finish some of the pages they had missed from when they must have been absent. As always I loved working with the children on a one-on-one basis.
Another thing I noticed this week was that one of the children, K, was absent again. She had two pages missing from her book, which means she has missed two days previously, and now she has missed yet another day. It just got me to thinking about how that might be a problem and missing school at such a young age could cause issues in their learning processes. She might be fine and it might not be a problem for her, but it just brought up the issue and really got me thinking about how home life does really affect school life.
Our reading this week was all about the importance of reading!!! I think it is great that there was a whole chapter denoted for reading. I was always a poor reader growing up, and it definitely had a negative impact on me, so I definitely want to do everything I can to make sure my students do not face the same issues as me!!!

Week Seven

So this week I taught my last lesson of the semester :( At the beginning of the semester I was worried about being in charge for a whole hour and a half, but honestly I was not worried at all when it came my turn to do it. My lesson this week was all transitions and behavior management though. I was glad of this fact though because I feel this is where I need the most work. I have done three semesters of lessons so I was ready for the challenge of transitioning the students multiple times within the hour and a half. I " taught" from 1030 till 1200 and here are the following transitions I did with the students : from the cafeteria to the classroom, from the classroom to the computer lab, from the computer lab to the classroom, from the classroom to recess, from recess back to the classroom, and then from the classroom to special area (music). I went really well but I can not take most of the credit for that. My cooperating teacher has done a super job preparing the children for transitions and most of them know exactly what to do and where to go with minimal help. The only thing I could improve on would be to better use some of the downtime between transitions. There were two points when inside the classroom where the children got a drink of water and then used the bathroom. Instead of having the children just wait on the carpet while both of these toke place, I could have involved them in a simple game or review some of their vocabulary words. I definitely thought about the Lemov book for that one, the "every minute matters" thing again. I also thought about the Lemov book because it has a whole section on transitions and how important they are, and how it really saves time and effort to have them run smoothly and quickly. Transitions will definitely be something I concentrate on right from the first day of school!!!