I feel as if my field blog posts showed a lot of growth for me and my learning so here is the example of my first blog post and my last.
First:
-
First thing in the morning the kids worked on grammar exercises by answering some questions, and fulling responding in full sentences. These personal questions and helping them with their answers allowed my to get to know the children more, and there likes and dislikes. After they finish we corrected them, and the students shared their answers with the class, and they marked their own work. Then it was time for the students to work on their biography project, which they had been working on for a couple of weeks, and they were typing their essays out. I got to help them edit and properly format their essays, they wrote about their heros which also helped me to get the know them more. After recess it was math class and the class was starting a new unit of percents, decimals, and fractions. I observed Mr. Schlenker teach his math lesson and then we helped students with their assignment for the day. Some students struggled more than others to connect the percents, decimals, and fractions together, and it was interesting to see how different some students thought process is than others.
-
The learners in my placement are a 7/8 split classroom at Glen Elm School, and it is a community school. These students are very unique bunch of kids, and they are all at varying levels of education and learning abilities. The learning environment is a classroom, and the students are set up in in pods in desks. The walls are decorated with students past projects from this years students and students from years before. This classroom is very different from the from the ones in my school, we had no split classrooms, and our desks were always put in rows. This feels like a very safe space for kids and they all seem to enjoy school, and they all seem comfortable in the classroom.
-
I really enjoyed my fieldwork this week it was nice to get to know the kids, it was fun to be in the school and to be working with the kids. It was nice to be able to help them understand and learn, and it made me excited for the rest of my time at the school. It did make me nervous learning about some of the students and their pasts because I have never helped a student with violence issues before, like some of the students in my class. I feel like I am off to a pretty good start, all of them seem to like me, and they are pretty fun to be around.
Last:
- Wednesday was different than most days because we didn’t have the classes as we normally do, which I enjoyed because I had only ever seen Mr. Schlenker teach ELA and Math, but today I also got to see him teach health. We started with ELA but we only did it for about 45 minutes, and the children worked on their last grammar lesson, and then on a project they had been working on. Then both 7/8 classes spilt and all the boys went to Mr. Scklenkler’s room and all the girls went to the other teachers room. They where working on s drugs unit, and it was different to see how the children really see drugs, some saw them as a problem and some do not. Other thought it was “okay” to drive high which it is not. After that it was an indoor recess do to all of the ice, so the children were in and out of the classroom, and then we moved on to Math. In math they had just moved on to a new unit, and the children were really understanding, which was nice because the last unit none of them really understood it. I helped three of the student who where really still struggling with the assignment, and for the fist time all of the student finished their assignments in the class, which was really nice to see on my last day.
- I really enjoyed my times at Glen Elm it is a really great school, and everyone was really nice. I feel as if I learned a lot about different styles of teaching because it change from lesson to lesson with his teaching styles. Overall it was really good to get the experience of teaching, and being in that classroom environment, even though sometimes I dreaded going I always had usually I good expense once I got there. When I look at the big picture I think I was very lucky with the school I got they where all nice and it felt like a very safe environment.
- I really enjoyed my last day and I was sad to know that I don’t get the chance to back again. The kids had extra energy today and I think it was because of the indoor recess, because it was so very icy outside, when I arrived there where kids sliding around outside trying to get to a door, and one of the buses was very late. I loved that I got to see health class on my last day because I had never seen that before and it was nice to see where the kids where at, when it came to drugs. Overall, it was a really great experience and I truly enjoyed the experience at sometimes it did make me question whether I really wanted to be a teacher, but in the end I just realized that I really do want to be a teacher.
These posts show how I grew and changed as I got to know the students and became more comfortable around them and they became more comfortable around me.