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.