Final Posting

I definitly am feeling more prepared to be a teacher now, than I was when I began this semester. I remember looking over the syllabus for each class I took this semester and I thought, how in the world am I gong to be able to do some of these things that these professers are asking me to do?! I was very nervous about getting into a classroom with live children and teaching them lessons. However, I feel that the my classes have provided me with the information and resources that I needed to carry out these tasks. I definitly feel better prepared to become a teacher.
Some of the goals that I have set for next semester include:Having better controle of the classroom environment by coming u with good tehniques to used to get students engaged in the lessons that I teach them. Another goal I have is to continue to develop strategies that I can use in my lesson plans, that will apppeal to th many different learning styles that I will find within the students I teach. I will do this by listening to what other teachers have done in their own teaching experiences.
I am excited about continuing in this program and am so happy that I have finally found a career that I love!

A student I observed

There was another student in the thrid grade class, besides the one I did my case study analysis on, whom I also observed over my time at CDC. This student seemed to need constant attention from the teachers. He was very active and had tons of energy. During every excercise that the class did, the teachers seemed to rotate taking turns sitting by this student to help him stay focused on the activity the class was doing. This child was very bright, and was very capable of doing his work correctly. However, he never could sit still. He would talk aloud in class as if he was in his own world. I thought the teachers did a great job with helping him stay on task as they used diffferent strategies to motivate him to do his work. I over heard one teacher talking to him and trying to work with him on setting goals throughout the day, for him to reach to get his work done. I think that these are great strategies to use with students who seem to have a hard time focusing and staying on task during the day. The teachers had obviously observed his behavior in the past, and had come up with solutions on how to direct him in such a way that would help him pay attention and complete his assignments. As teachers, it is so important for them to know their students and to create lesson plans and strategies that are approprite for each type of learner.

Final 3rd grade observation

I trully will ahve to say tht I will miss the third grade class at CDC. They were such a bright group of students, who were eager to learn. I thought that my favorite grade to teach would be the 3's and 4's. However, from this experience, I found that I loved the third grade! I really enjoyed interacting with this group of students. I found tht the more I am ble to ealte to them, the more they tend to respond to what I am teaching them.
Something that I will take away from this experience and try to use in my own classroom is taking very opportunity to teach the students the importance of being espectful to others and resecting themselves. I believe that the teachers at CDC did a great job instilling these values within their students. There are too many kids these day who do not learn these lessons and it gets them in trouble. I want to be the teacher who shows them the importance in maintaining these velues in their own lives.
I really enjoyed working with these wondeful children!

Third Field experience

This week I taught the third graders my reading lesson plan on sequencing in narrative texts.
The lesson went great! The book I read was "Three Billy Goats Gruff."The lesson focused on learning Exposition ( the beginning of a story),Rising Actions, Climax, Falling Actions, and Resolution. This book was a great resource to use to teach these sequences because the events that happened in the book,correlated with the sequence format that I was teaching the students. By the end of my lesson, it was obvious that the students had a strong understanding of the sequencing of narrative texts as they were able to point out the sequence of events in oter texts, without my help. If I end up teaching third grade in the future, I will definitly reuse this lesson. I really enjoyed teaching the third grade and look forward to many more oppotunities to enhance my teaching skills!

Field Study 2

I love the third grade! It is amazing to me to see how well the third graders that I have observed in my class can read and write. The workbook that I see them independently working in thoughout the day is called their DOL book. I believe it stands for Daily Oral Language. It consists of different reading and writing excerises for them to work on to develope their fluency in reading and writing.I remember the writng and reading workbooks that I had in third grade and they seemd to have similar excersises in them as well. I was very impressd with their skill levels.

I also noticed last week that Mrs. Brown, the third grade teacher, has posted certain standards around the room from lessons that they have learrned so far throughout the year. I like this idea because as you look around the room, you can see what standards have been addressed so far in the class this year. It is nice to see the large amount of topics that they have covered so far in such a short period of time.

Field Study 1

I observed the third grade class yesterday and absolulty loved it!! I observed their Monday morning meeting in which the 4th and 5th grade classes came into the third grade room. During the meeting, they discussed the improtance of being respectful to each other and to their teachers. Apparently this had been an issue that needed to be discussed. The faculty member who lead the meeting reminded the students that there was no room in the school for anyone to be disrespectful, and that they needed to treat each other like a family. I thought this was great because it reminded everyone of the importance of sticking together and being kind to one another.
After the meeting, th thirdgraders prepared to learn about contractions. Ms. Brown, the lead teacher, used a website on contractions which she displayed on the projector during the lesson.I was impressed by how quickly the students responded to the lesson and were eager to answer her questions.
Next the students pulled ot their DOL workbooks. The excersise they did in the workbook asked them to write polite responses to certain questions.For example, they had to resond to " What would you say to someone who gave you a gift?" They would have to respond by writing a full, grammatically correct sentence, with correct punctuation. I was able to help one child with this excercise. It was so rewarding to see her understand what she was supposed to do after I helped her! The smile on her face was priceless!

Case Study 7/ Qustion 3

Dahlia involves her students families in the Library Construction Project when she sends a letter home to them asking for their imuts on what their children's interests are about construction. She also eplains in the letter, what the prject is about and how it eveolved. By asking for the parents imput, it allows them to be more connected to their children as they know what they are doing in school. Also, it llows for education to continue outside of school in their homes. It is very important for a teaher to involve her students families in school projects. It allows for parents to further their child's interest and learning on the subject matter beind discussed in class, outside of class.

I did not observe a class this week, but will next week. Therefore, I wanted to discuss the different learning environments, such as the montessori school and Reggio Emelio approaches, that can be found in South Carolina Schools.
Personally, I am a big fan of the Reggio Emilio approach. I like the way that students are enouraged to explore concepts they encounter in their environment on their own. I like how teachers conduct small group discussions with their students by probing the with questions about what they are exploring. The environement seems very nourishing for the childs. It gives the hild freedm to explre what they wish to, but by the teacher engaging them in discussion, it challeneges ham and expands their thinking.

The montessori approach is good I think for some children but not for all . From my perception of this approach, kids thrive in this environment if they like to explore things independently and are motivated by learning from their peers. This approach allows for kids to learn from one another, which is great, however what happens when one kid is not at the same learning level as the others? What happens when kids with learning disabilities are put into this environment? I think that this approach is great for kids on the same level of learning but it may be probalmatic for kids who are not.

I definitly see the need though for different teaching approaches to be used in different schools in order to cater to every kind of student. It is just a matter of finding the approach that fullfills the childs needs the best!

The ABC Train Case study 12, Reponse to question 1

Kenji suggests that the kids are at various levels of developent at this time. Some are going to have a stronger understanding of the alphabet than others at this time. For some of the less advanced kids, they may not be at the point yet where they can put the letters of the alphabet in order, because some of them do not know all of the letters yet. He suggests that they think about teaching the alphabet to the class in a more broader sense where the kids are activity they plan can be accomplished by everyone in the class, no matter what their skill level is. By allowing the kids to pick out their own letters and put them in any order, the kids are given alot more freedom to explore the alphabet according to their skill level. Most likely, the letters that they choose to put on their train will be ltters that have meaning to them in some way. They may be found in their name, or they may have seen them many times in a familiar book. Kenji suggests that by allowing kids to explore the alphabet on more of their own terms, they are less likely to get frustrated and they are more likley to get some sense of meaning from the activity. I definitly agree with the recommendations that Kenji gave to the students. I can remember when I was young and starting to learn my letters and the ones that were most important to me were the ones I saw in my name. My teacher was very good about allowing us to explore the alphabet on a level that suited each of us. I found that the more I was given free reign to explore the alphabet in my own terms, inspired me to want to learn more and more about the alphabet as the meaning of it developed.


Response to question #2

In the second plan the students have modified it so that they read a book to the kids about trains and discuss the book. This is a great way to help introduce the train theme to the kids. By reading the story to them it may help to introduce or reintroduce new words or letters to the kids and inspire them to use them in the train they create. By discussing what the train's function is and how it is all connected may introduce to the kids that are a little more advanced that the letters of the alphabet follow each other in a certain sequence, just like the cars on a train follow each other. Another way the team sparks the interests of the kids is they make the letters out of different types of material. For tactile students, this would be a gret way for them to associate a letter possibly with the wy that it feels. After each child completes their personally designed train, they display them on the bulletin board for the whole class to view and eah child is given the chance to talk about their train. This helps to introduce new ideas and ways of thinking about letters by seeing them dislayed in the many different styles on the board. For the teachers, it also llows them to get an idea of where kids are skills wise in their understanding of the alphabet.

Case Study 1/ Question 1

In this case study we can se the two instrucctors, Shawna and Ronnie, constantly engaging the infants in conversation. As teachers, it is great that they do this because it stimulates the infant's brains by introducing them to communication sounds. In this case study, Shawna feeds 4 month old Deshi his bottle. While she feeds him she looks into his eyes and quitly asks him if he is enjoying his bottle. He stares back at here and recognizes that she is speaking to him. Even though he cannot yet nderstand what she is saying and he cannot respond, his brain istaking in the sounds that she is making. Another great thing that I noticed within this study was when Natalya came into the classroom to nurse her son and she spoke to him in Russian, his native language. By speaking to him in this way, she is helping him to absorb his natuve tongue, while he is also learning English from his teachers. At the infant stage, it is easy foor kids to learn many different languages because they are so modable and thir inds are eager to soak u any language sounds that they can. Babies who are not spoken to and are not stimulated will develope at a slower rate. Their minds will not have been stmulated as much as babies who are constantly spoken to wen they are young.

Classroom observation 1

Today I observed the three year old and toddler classes at the Early Childhood Development Center. The first class I observed was the three year old class. When I arrived, the students were playing with blocks and small toys around the classoom. The lead teacher's name was Ms. Mcartney. After playing with the blocks it ws time tostart the day, so in order to get the class ready to transition to the next activity, Ms. Mcartney had them sing the clean up song so that all the students would know it was time to finish playing with the blocks, cean up, and move onto th next activity. She told each student to find their name on the rug in the classroom and sit on it. During this rug time she told then that they would be going to breakfast neext but before they did, they woud need to wash their hands and get in line. She had a stck with each students name on it which she would pull out one at a time and say the childs name and that would be their sign that it ws thei turn towash their hnds and then get in line to go to breakfast. I thought this was a great way to move the children frm one place to another in an orderly fashion. Not only did the kids have to folo the diections fromtheir teachers, but they also were able to practice getting to know what their names looked like from the name she pulled out on the sticks. After they were ll lined up she had them sing a song which old them to have their hands behind their backs and get ready to be quiet to go out into the hall and to the cafeteria. Once in the cafeteria, the kids knewto sit down patiently while the teachers came around with the cereal anf fruit. Ms. Mcartney said that it is part of the head start program for the school to give them a nutritious breakfst in the morning. After breakfst the each lined p on an imaginary line, sang the hall song that they did before and went back to t heir classroom here they were instructed to once again find their name on the rug and sit down. I learned that the rug is a great thing to hahve in the classromm as the primary spot for the teacher togather her kids to instruct them on whet will be hapening next. Its a great spot for transition. I had to move onto the toddler class next but really enjoyed being with the three year olds!
The next class I had was the toddlers. In this class there were 4 children. The teacher said that the way they carry on classroom activities is by introducing different activities to the kids for them to do and then they et the kids decide whether they want to dothe activity or not. These kids are less able to follow direction like the three yera oldds, so it is easier to introduce a variety of things for them to doand then let them decide what they would like to do. We layed ouside and then painted and also played with the blocks that were in the classroom. One of the chldren was a little mre advanced than the others and so she was given tasks tha were a little more cchalenging for her to do. My favorite class so far was the three year olds.

Why I chose Early Childhood Education!

I absolutly adore working with children, especially the young ones.Over the summers, during my highschool and college years, I worked on staff at a summer camp called Camp St. Christopher on Seabrook Island, SC. The ages of the kids who came to camp ranged from 4 to 17. As a staff member, I was responsible for leading different camp activities which ranged from sailing, to outdoor skills and beach games, and also leading them in bible studies. Working with these kids, feuled my passion to wantto go into a fieldwhere I would work with them every day. Since I particularly enjoy working with the younger kids, ages 3to 8, I decided to persue a degreein teaching. I cant wait to utilize my creativity,passion, and energy to influence the lives of children. I hope that through this semester, I will learn the techniques and strategies to be the best teacher I possibly can be. I cant wait to see what the future holds for me and us as a class!!