Blog Entry #3

For part of my hours I worked with some resource students. Most of them, but not all, were ESL students. The students were given private testing areas and had me verbally read the instructions on all their tests. Some of the things I helped test them on were spelling, math, and English. The teacher also tried several activities to help them learn English sounds. The teacher had me work individually with them on practicing letter sounds. One student particularly stood out to me because he kept getting really frustrated when he didn't know an answer. I tried to stay upbeat, smile at him, and encourage him a lot. At my regular job I work with special needs students as a classroom aid. My boss told us that we should give students positive reinforcement every five to ten minutes to let them know that they are doing well. I tried to implicate that idea while working at Cherry Creek Elementary because I feel like all students, no matter what their level, need to know when they are improving.

Blog Entry #1

I noticed the teacher in the classroom I did fieldwork for was always busy. She had no down time ever. I was quite amazed that she was able to keep track so well of what needed to be done and in what order. For the most part, the teacher gave me the prep jobs she needed done while she worked with the children. She read to them a lot, which was interesting for me to watch because I'm currently taking Children's Literature and we often talk about how to use books in our classroom lessons. Today, for example, she used a cute story to help the students recognize the "ch" sound. She read the story out loud and had the students raise their hands whenever they heard her say the "ch" sound. It was a creative way to implicate literature into the lesson and to keep the students engaged in the story. The teacher made the students to a lot by themselves. They were put into groups and expected to work out problems as a group instead of asking the teacher every little question they had, which was a brilliant idea because, I noticed, they had a lot of questions. I noticed specifically that she made them guess how to spell words before she would tell them the correct spelling. I think that it's really important for students to at least put effort into doing work on their own because problem solving skills are probably more important for us to teach than whatever specific fact they're trying to learn. The teacher didn't spend a whole lot of time standing in front of the class teaching lessons. She spent, at most, a half hour on a lesson and then moved onto the activities and assignments. I think it's important for teachers to be aware of the attention span of their students. It took only a few minutes for the students to get distracted and lose interest in what the teacher was saying unless she was doing something exceptionally interesting.

Blog Entry #2

I worked with one particular student several times because she struggled to keep up with the class. I don't think that it was hard for her to keep up because she didn't understand how to do her work, but because she was very easily distracted. Still, that's not really what I want to write about. The most interesting thing about this girl was that she was from a unique religion. I noticed that the other students didn't play with her very much and one girl even said to me during lunch, "She doesn't believe in Jesus." I tried to explain to the other kids that it's alright for us to believe different things and we need to treat everyone the same regardless of what they believe. I have heard a lot about being tolerant of diversity from many of my classes this semester. It is a subject which, until recently, I hadn't considered to be quite as large a problem as it realistically is. As teachers, we need to be aware of the many diversities in our classrooms and make appropriate accommodations. The teacher I did my fieldwork with made special assignments for her student from a different religious background because her religion does not celebrate Valentine's Day and many assignments for the week were related to Valentine's Day since the holiday is next week. I noticed she did not make a big deal of it or announce in front of the whole class that this student was different. The change in assignment happened during a private conversation between only the teacher and the student. Likewise, the student didn't draw attention to her different assignments. There is no need to overemphasize differences. Even though the student wasn't around, I wonder how she would have reacted when her classmates said that she doesn't believe in Jesus. Would she be offended, or would it make her feel like they think she's stupid, or maybe she wouldn't care? One of my professors suggested that, if this particular situation comes up in our classrooms, it may be a good idea to give the student an opportunity to explain what their religion is. Of course, this must be done with an educational attitude, not as an attempt to convert. Still, I feel like maybe the other students in the class would be more accepting of that student if they understood a bit more about her religious background.