This week was a really good learning experience for me in many ways. There were a few things that I felt like I was pushed into but Miss Baird said that I did a good job and that there was still much more for me to learn. I was nervous about some things and I was excited for some things. I really only had one day in the classroom this week because on Tuesday we went on a field trip and I learned so much on the field trip, like how I never want to plan a field trip. The students had fun but I spent the day worrying about if I was going to lose a student.
This week:
§ Responsibility of watching students and making sure all were with us. Lots of counting students on the field trip and to make sure were all there. A group of us walked from Albertsons to Nature Park and I was in the back making sure that no students fell behind us and I could see all students. Learned lots of name because I had to use them to tell them what they should and should not be doing as they came close to running in the road or refused to walk in front of me.
§ I helped the class out with some sign language. They read a story about a deaf class going to a concert and the book had some pictures of words. Some of the words were hard to understand how the hands were going and I had told them I took ASL in high school so I helped out the class with the sign language. The students even came up to me afterword finger spelling words to see if I could tell what they were spelling.
§ I taught the language arts center. The work book pages we did had to do with the story we read. It was using vocabulary words from the story and placing them in sentences. The second page was dealing with giving more detail about a sentence. This was the hardest page and not many of the students got past this page. It gave them a sentence and they had to give more detail from the story about it. The last page we were able to get to had to do with adjectives since they have been learning about them. They had to color some words in a picture that were adjectives and they had to fill in the blank in sentences with adjectives. It really tested their ability to recognize and use adjectives. The first page they were able to do on their own but the second and third page they really needed a lot of help. I would ask questions to try to help them figure out what the answer was.
§ I was on recess duty today with Miss Baird. It was interesting and a little crazy. The students all wanted to play with me and I kept hearing “MISS ELLIOTT” from all parts of the play ground. I had I few girls attached to me most of the time so I tried to get them to run around and play. We did some jumping jacks and played tag. They kept complaining about how cold it was and by the time I was done with them they were complaining about how hot it was.
§ I taught the math lesson on making and labeling arrays. I am not a fan of Saxon math and their script for me to read to the students. So I started off the lesson with them at the kiva and gave them some examples like a marching band or the calendar being arrays. I showed them on the board what an array was and how to label the array. I then went through the script having the student come up to the board and draw the array and label it. I made sure that I called on every student at least once and asked lots of questions for them to all answer. I used repetition on which number goes where and what were rows. I had them go back to their seats and use the tiles and their work sheet to each draw and label some arrays. They made it with their tiles first, then they could draw it when I told them too and label it when I said to do so. I made sure each student was done before we moved on. After the three examples were done they went back to the kiva and we reviewed again everything we had learned. I went over the worksheet with them and handed it out to them. I walked around the classroom and just monitored for the rest of the time.
There were some moments this week that I really had to think about how to handle something. In the moment I really don’t have time to stop and think but I have been thinking a lot yesterday after school about how I can help a few of the students in the class. They give up way to easily and when I keep trying to push them to do their work they get more frustrated with me. The only thing that I can really think of to help them is to go against one of my biggest things as a teacher. I refuse to spoon feed the students. I will not give them the answer. I will ask them questions that will get them to give me the answer but I will not tell them point blank what the answer is. I feel like the only way to help a few of the students is to tell them what the answer is. Though even when I have done that one boy still gets mad at me because I tell him to write it down. Another thing was how to I know how if the students know the material when they work in groups and I know for a fact that they wait for their neighbor to write down the answer and they write it down. I tried to get a student to jump a question ahead to answer it for me and he got very upset with me.
The biggest this I need to work on is just what is above. I want to find the best way to help the students and help them learn and not get frustrated too much. I believe that the stopping and thinking and what I need to work on really will be focused on this the next few weeks. I know these will take time and multiple tries but I won’t give up on the students.
<3 Erin Christina
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