Thursday, April 9, 2015

Blog 1 ::: Finally Accepted onto the Blog


Today was the first day I was observing and helping out in Ms. M’s fourth grade class at Southside Elementary.  Southside Elementary started at 8:25am but I arrived at 9:00am, so when I entered Ms. M's class the lesson had already began. Right when I walked into her classroom she stopped the class and introduced me and said I could sit / walk anywhere in the classroom I pleased. After introducing she started up the lesson again. I noticed that she started with questions about the lesson and then quickly the students raised their hands with excitement and who ever she chose she would throw a little ball at them to catch which meant they had the right to talk. Then after a couple of questions they started reading their textbooks again. One student would read to the class on a micro-phone that echoed around the whole class, after a couple of sentences she would give it to someone else to read. Whenever the students would get stuck on a word Ms. M was always quick to help them. As they continued to read I walked around the classroom observing all the colorful posters on the walls, the desks in groups of four or five, a class pet, calendars and then realizing that Ms. M didn’t really have a desk. She was always interacting, and walking around in need of the students. After they were done with the lesson for the day Ms. M broke the class into groups for activities. One group would be on the computer doing a program called “iready” it’s a program based off the individuals knowledge so each kids program is different and fitted to help them individually learn. Another group was working on work sheets based off of the lesson they just learned. And the last group was with Ms. M going over the Writing Test Assessment Opinion Prompt. This group was for kids that were struggling and needed extra help. During this time she would break the questions down based off what they did not score good on.
After the group sessions that lasted about 15 minutes because the students cooperated and were silent getting back to their seats Ms. M gave them 5 marbles rewarding them for being good. The next activity was Journal Writing, Ms. M gave them a prompt about their opinion on having Physical Ed, during this time I walked around helping students develop their idea’s and thoughts. But also during this time I noticed one kid had this head down on the table, so I went up to him and asked if everything was ok, right away the student sitting next to him told me he didn’t speak English. Then Ms. M told him to go back to the computers and do “iready”. She then told me that he started 3 weeks, and doesn’t speak any English. Also that some kids from South America come here during the winter because its too hot there so they put there kids in school only for a couple of months. She says it’s hard for the teachers because by the time they’re done with testing and finding out where they fit they leave. So after the Journal Writing it was finally time to line up and get ready for lunch. So she first makes the line leader and door holder line up first, then the most calm, and quiet table next. After everyone was lined up she dismissed the students to walk quietly in a straight line to lunch. I walked with them to lunch, said goodbye then left. What an exciting day at my first day of Field Experience just one day and I’ve already learned a lot.


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