September 30, 2012

Tell About an Opportunity You Had to Work One on One With a Student

While the students were working on a subtraction assignment, they could go to the teacher in the back of the room for some feedback and she would circle the problems they had done incorrectly. A student raised his hand and I came over to help. He had almost all of his problems circled. I could see that he understood the concept of regrouping (borrowing), but he was doing very poorly on simple arithmetic. I remember asking him, "what's seven minus four?" He would think for a few seconds and say pretty confidently "four." I asked him if he was sure and then held up seven fingers and counted backwards four times. He could see now that the answer was three.

We tried this a few more times and almost every time he tried to subtract in his head he would come up with the wrong answer, but every single time he counted on his fingers he came up with the right one. I told him to always count on his fingers when he wasn't sure and that I do it all the time. I left him to work alone and wandered around the class for a few minutes. When I came back, I could see the he was finally getting the right answers consistently.

Everyone learns differently. Some students can do subtraction from memorization or in their heads, and others need visual cues, like counting on fingers, or some other method. I don't think any one method is better than the other. This particular student I was working with seemed to possibly be a kinestetic or visual learner. Physically doing the action of counting down on his fingers every time allowed him to succeed.

September 13, 2012 - What Does a Teacher do all Day?

September 13, 2012

What Does a Teacher do all Day?

Today was my first day of fieldwork. It was at Vineyard Elementary with Miss Barber's third grade class. At this school, half the class comes in early and leaves early (AM students) and the other half comes in later and leaves later (PM students). This how this school deals with large class sizes. The teacher has the AM students by themselves in the morning to give them more individual attention and the PM students by themselves in the afternoon.

When I came into the class at 9:00 only the AM students were there. Miss Barber was at a table with about 6 students in a reading group and the other 6 or so were at their desks reading on their own. At 9:15 the PM students came and joined the rest of the class. The class then went to a computer lab to finish some computerized tests they are required to do. About half the class was already done with the testing and read their books while the rest of the class finished. I wandered around observing students taking the test. It was a language test and I was surprised about the difficulty of some of the questions.

After the testing on the computers was done, we went back to the classroom and the teacher starting teaching about subtracting and borrowing from 0s and three digit numbers. She did some examples and passed out a worksheet of 15 problems. I went around the class and helped a few students with their questions while they did the assignment. About the time they finished their assignment the bell rang for recess. I graded the subtraction worksheet during recess and chatted with Miss Barber a little bit. Most of the students did really well on the assignment, with the exception of one or two.

When the kids came back from recess, they worked on writing stories and I left while they were working. It was a great experience and am looking forward to next week.