Field Experience III

It was interesting being in a fifth and sixth grade combined classroom. The students were well aware of the grade that they were in, however, were able to interact with each other equally. The only time I ever saw any difference was sort of like gender bias when the teacher is calling on students. It was instead a grade bias. One time the students we reading a passage on a projector and one student rose her hand and said, "You are only calling on sixth graders!" to our cooperating teacher. So, not only does she deal with the gender bias, she deals with the "grade bias." I found also in some journal entries that the students are now forming attitudes and personal fables. We went on a field trip with the students to the Space Center in Pleasant Grove. On of the students accounts of his experience was this. "We went to the space center and I had already been there a few times before. I had the same job (they are assigned jobs on a space ship) as last time and it was really boring. If I would have known that John was going to be the captain of our ship I would have just blown the ship up and ruined it for everyone." It was major attitude coming from is journal entry. Our cooperating teacher was not impressed by his attitude and when we were teaching social studies she asked me to keep a good watch on time to make sure he wasn't off task talking about his horrible time. One other thing I noticed about this student is that everything "sucked" our end of unit project was a lot of fun, well all the other students were engaged with it. So I asked him to say atleast three things that sucked about it and he couldn't come up with anything. I would consider it a personal fable, because everything "sucks." I can remember being in that stage, it is just interesting to see how the negative attitude of one studetn can spread. In a lesson with our cooperating teacher he just said to the experiement "this sucks" and would refuse to help his team do their science observations with bending light. One thing for sure that I have learned about this whole experiment is that there always has to be a plan B and nothing goes according to plan. I learned a lot but one thing I learned is that nothing is more constant than change.

Field Experience II

I had my students do a webquest this week on ancient civilizations and it was very difficult to find sites that were modest. It was the strict request of our cooperating teacher to have modest art. It is very difficult to have an Ancient Greece webquest that doesn't have a naked statue or something like that. Anyway I finally make a webquest for the five ancient civilizations that I am doing and the whole time even though I knew that the sites were "kid friendly" my heart was racing that they would navigate to something and I would be the one to blame. Even when I knew they were good sites. It is interesting to be in an area that is very conservative. I remember when I was in 6th grade that we looked at picture after picture because our teacher explained. I don't think harmful, however, I am complying with my teacher and area of students. I also had a glitch with technology this week when I was trying to put my rubric for a presentation on the Elmo. Our teacher has a very disorganized station where she keeps her technology like laptop, elmo, remotes and it also has piles of paper etc... So I felt like I was invading personal space when I was clearing off some of the papers because I couldn't get the paper to lay straight. Needless to say I love of the technology our teacher has in the classroom, I would just set things up different.
In my class the students are very boy/girl shy, a girl didn't even want to sit in a boy's desk! It was interesting because the teacher said, "call me when you get asked out on a date." and the student said"NOT IN A MILLION YEARS!" I had a good personal laugh at that. I remember being boy crazy because my mom made me dump my sixth grade boyfriend. Something that our teacher was talking to us about make me feel really said for two students in my class. Last year they had a teacher that did not treat these two boys very well. They both are very hyper and are loud, which shouldn't be put down. Unfortunately the teacher did not handle the situation very well and the boy's now have a poor sense of self. One of the boys drew a very good picture and I complimented him about his picture and he just deflected it and said he was "dumb." It makes me feel bad that other people feel the need to put down others, especially a student. I like that our teacher can find the good thing in every student. She said you have to do that or it doesn't make teaching worth it. I agree with her fully.

FIELD

I touched a smart board for the first time in my life at it was AMAZING!!! I want one so so so bad there are so many things you can do with one. We drew pie graphs of the election on the smart board and they students are able to save the work they do on one. Also, it was interesting to hear what the students had to say about the canidates. I thought that a lot of their ideas came from their parents. Unlike a real board that once it is wiped it is gone for ever, no with the smart board. You can save the work you did on the board as an image and then add to it later. It is amazing. Also, not to mention the marker doesn't run out or you can have any color you image as a marker. Also, with our technology rich lesson we were able to pull up a website on indigenous people, which is the unit we are teaching. It was great to be able to pull up the definition on the projector and compare the sites definition with the definition we made up. I loved using the smart board because you can do so many things with it. It took me a little getting use to the tools of the smart board. The kids really think it is cool. When you call someone up to use it you can see the excitement in their eyes. If I were to have a smart board in my classroom I would have it in a different position in my classroom. The way our teacher has it now it is kind of in the way, and not all the students can really see what is going on. So either, she needs to move her seating or the board. I am sure it is easier to move the seating, but anyway that is my opinion. I really liked being able to do a power point in our lesson because we were able to show things to the whole class at once. That is also like the Elmo that is in our classroom. The teacher is able to show the whole class a student who did a good job on an assignment and make things clear to the whole class on the spot instead of having to make a transparency. I have taught two times and it is going really well. The kids are really smart and they are good at taking instructions which is great. Being in this classroom has taught me some things that I know for sure I will not have. Our teacher is a MESS. She has piles of papers all across the room and in order for me to even use the Elmo, I had to clear a space for me to even lay something under it flat. Needless to say she is disorganized, but it has taught me a lot of things just being there for one week.