Blog Post 8- What is the most important thing you have learned during fieldwork observation? Why?

The most important thing that I have learned during fieldwork is classroom management. It has been interesting for me to look at the classroom that I have been working in and seeing things that will work for me and things that I think will not work for me. I believe this is the most important thing that I have taken away in my fieldwork because this is the foundation of everything that happens in the classroom. Respect must be established for the teacher and each individual student before any learning can take place. There also needs to be respect between the students so that there is a judgement free zone where students can feel safe and vulnerable, this is where the most learning can happen.

The other aspect of classroom management that I think is crucial is managing the classroom with a lot of different teaching philosophy's and styles. This is important so that you can find each style that your students need in order to learn the most. Bringing in the different styles like reading and discussing as a class and small groups, utilizing technology, using music and songs, different movements, and games will all be used to help each learning style. It is so amazing to see all the great new techniques that have come out and have been for the most part implemented in the classrooms since I last went to school. These kids and teachers have such an advantage with all the progress we have seen. I cant wait to figure out my teaching style and figure out what type of classroom management is going to work the best for me and my students.

Blog Post-7 What are the school rules/classroom rules and how are they enforced?

Managing a classroom is a very important part of being a teacher. There needs to be clear rules and expectations that they follow. There needs to be praise for positive behavior, as well as discipline for negative behavior. In the classroom that I have attended for my fieldwork he does things a little differently than many teachers I have observed. He has a form of the credit card system that was shown in the modules. All students have a card on their desks. If they are misbehaving, talking out of turn, wandering around the room, or doing anything that is not expected in the classroom rules he "marks" their card. At the end of the month how ever empty squares that they have on their card they can spend in the classroom store. The store has everything from candy to coupons for lunch with the teacher.

This system seems to be working with his class. They have basic rules of no talking when the teacher is talking, paying attention, no wandering the room, be respectful to other students, be on task, etc. If they are doing any of these things he starts to mark the cards. This instantly gets the class back on track and listening. Usually he only has to mark a few cards to get the whole class under control. They all seem to have a mutual respect and it seems to be working well for his classroom.

Blog Post 6-What strategies does the teacher use to actively engage students? How effective are these?

There are a couple different ways that the teacher has been using active learning while I have been in his class. The first one is he has his students use a chrome book and uses the website quizizz.com where the whole class has the same quiz that the teacher has created and they have play against one another. They also post the progress up on the board to show who has the most right who is getting the answers the fastest etc. It was really fun for the kids, it was combining learning with a video game aspect. All the kids in the class were very engaged and learning.

The other one that I saw that was effective was he strategically placed 4-5 kids in a group using each of their strengths to help form a group that could work together and could learn together. This seemed a little more labor intensive than the other but I think each student benefited a little more from this strategy just because of the thought process before hand of who to group together. This approach also made some of the students that are normally quieter and stay on the sidelines of some of the other activities play an active role in the group. There are only a couple other kids so they had to step up and add to the group. I see benefits to both approaches. The opportunity to work in the classroom has helped me to understand the importance of using several different teaching methods in order to help each different type of learner be able to succeed.

Blog post 5- What do you think is the most important role a teacher plays? Why?

Teachers are an integral part of society. When you step back and look at it, there is not many other roles as important as a teacher. The role is becoming more and more important as we are seeing more dual income and single parent families. These situations are leaving the lions share of not only teaching children reading and writing etc, but also teaching basic human skills and where each child gets their much needed face to face time with a caring adult.

With all of this said I believe that the most important role a teacher plays is that of helping a child realize and understand their worth and potential. There are many ways a teach can do this. I believe that this is the most important because if a child/student doesn't believe in themselves and doesn't have the confidence that they can do hard things, they will never push themselves to reach their potential. I know I can look back and remember specific instances where a teacher had a huge impact on me and changed my life for the better. This is a major part of my decision to become a teacher so I can hopefully have a positive effect in my students lives.

Blog Post 4-What clerical and preparation responsibilities have you participated in?

Some of the clerical responsibilities that I have helped with in the classroom are grading math tests. I helped grade their final math assignment for the year. In addition, I helped with grading their math facts. They are asked to finish all of their multiplication and division math facts as they are timed for one minute for each number that they are on. Most of the students are on different stages of multiplication or division. It was interesting to see the wide range of levels of each student. It made me realize the importance of different types of assessments that I learned in class this week.

It was interesting to watch the different types of assessments and how they were administered after doing the module on assessments. I could see that the teacher was using a variety of assessments to meet the needs of all the children in his class. He did an interactive quiz on kahoot. He was reading the math test out loud to a student who struggles with reading. There was also testing being done on computers, and some being done by paper. I observed that the teacher was making different adjustments to assessing the children based on their needs. It really helped me to see all the different ways you can assess a student.

Blog Post 3- What modifications for learners who are exceptional do you see?

In my observations this week in my time in class, it was interesting to see how much goes into these modifications for exceptional learners. Before I studied this information I didn't realize the purpose of all the different modifications that the teacher had in play in his classroom and in his teaching. He has a big exercise ball that he has some of the exceptional students sit on as a chair at different times in the day. They get to bounce as they do their work, this helps them concentrate on what they are working on. He also has different aides come into the classroom to change things up and make things interestingly different throughout the day. I see modifications to the normal learning where he adds in fun to the learning process whether it is a game or a song that he uses to help the students learn different things.

After learning about this and then talking to the teacher about his thought process and what he has learned over the years, it was amazing to see how much thought and time he had spent researching and trying different things in his classroom. The dedication to the children that I am seeing in the classrooms that I visit is inspiring to me as an aspiring teacher and as a mother of elementary age students. It is crazy to see how many students that may fall into some or all of the definition of exceptional students. I can see the importance of making many of these modifications as a big part of my teaching style.

Blog Post 2-Tell about an opportunity you had to work one on one with a student

I continued working in a fourth grade classroom this week. I got to work with a student that is struggling to pay attention and finish his math assignments. He actually understands the math quite well. He just has a hard time to keep focused on what he is supposed to be doing. It was a good experience to try and come up with ways to keep his attention and to keep him continually working on his math assignment.

As I was working with this one student, I was thinking about what I had learned this week with the history of education. I couldn't help but think of this student who was very much different from the rest of the students in his class. I thought about what it had to be like for the African American kids back then, trying to get a education, but just because their skin was a different color they were treated poorly. I was so grateful that as a society and a learning institution we have come such a far way. I am not sure of this, but it has seemed to me that even though this student is much different than those other students in his class, there doesn't seem to be any negative social impact. This has also made me think about what I can do as a teacher to ensure that there is always a culture of inclusion and learning in my classroom. As I am doing my fieldwork I am going to focus on what positive behaviors I see in the different classrooms from the different teachers that I would like to incorporate into my teaching methodology.

Blog Post 1-What development differences do I see in the children in the classroom?

My first fieldwork day was in a fourth grade classroom. The teacher asked me to work with a few students who were not quite understanding their math assignment. As I began working with them I noticed how they were all on a slightly different level. One student, could not get all the processes of the subtraction part of the lesson, while another was struggling with the multiplication section. It was interesting to see that they each needed to have it explained in a different way. It quickly became apparent that before I could help these students understand the areas that they needed help with, I had to find out how they best learn and adapt my teaching to that style. It was a good experience for me to teach the concepts to them in a way that they could understand. If they were not understanding it one way, I switched directions. I also observed that for some students they finished their assignments very quickly, while it took other students a significantly longer amount of time.

The teacher that I am observing teaches mostly with the cognitive learning theory. As I was watching him teach I noticed that he, first, showed them how to do the math problem. Then he had them do the problem by themselves. He then followed up with them by making sure that they had done all the steps properly by going over it with them again. I also noticed him using the behavioral theory while he was teaching to make sure that the classroom was under control. He would praise kids that were on task, listening, and participating. In contrast, he would punish, according to his class rules, kids that were misbehaving, not participating, or were just not doing what was expected. I can tell that each of the students know what is expected in this classroom. I can also see a need for the Multiple Intelligence theory. Right now in this classroom kids that are "nontraditional" students that perhaps learn in other ways get shuffled to me because they do not grasp the different concepts in the traditional ways. This has been good for me to see the importance of having multiple ways to teach in order to reach each students learning style. I can see that this is difficult because you don't have the time or resources to impact each individual student.