In the Classroom!
Hello,
I hope all is well! My mind has been a little distracted today, because I am greatly looking forward to this weekend. It's going to be beautiful and, I don't know about you, but I need some warmth and sunshine in my life right about now. This week was our first classroom experience at Washington Elementary. I can already tell it's going to be a fantastic time for all of us. Monday was mainly an observation day and it was slightly hectic, because the teacher I was assigned with was out and had a substitute. He handled the process well, but I did not feel like the experience was an adequate representation of these students' normal lives. So, I'm looking forward to Monday.
When Grace and I were in the classroom on Tuesday, students were in Literacy/Language Arts class. They were broken up into groups and switched stations between independent reading, group reading, and phonics. This was quite an eye-opening experience. I witnessed many excelled students, but there were about two children who, as told by the teacher, were on a Kindergarten reading level (They're in 2nd grade). I saw this student struggle so hard at trying to pronounce sounds like /j/ and /y/. It honestly broke my heart, and I wondered what events had led up to this child's life to cause him to be so behind everyone else, if there even were any events or if it was purely biological.
Pertaining to struggling readers, I found a series of videos from this website: http://www.readingrockets.org/helping/struggle that observes a biological view of the brain in order to further understand why students struggle with reading. It was informative and presented facts in an easy-to-follow manner. I strongly recommend watching at least the first 2 videos. This is relevant to our class because reading is basis of learning. A student cannot read math word problems, read about historians, locate geographical places, interpret scientific information, etc. without being able to identify and produce proper sounds. Being able to classify struggling readers and what their specific struggle is, is crucial to the differentiation process and relates back to our lesson on performance tasks. Performance tasks show what students know and what they can do. In my future classroom, I cannot be a functional, exceeding teacher without even considering this teaching aspect. It would be impossible for a teacher to teach if he/she does not know what level his/her students are on. When you know what your "dealing with," then learning can more likely be facilitated, which applies to NCPTS IV. Instruction must be appropriate, relatable, and varied so ALL students get an adequate education.
Overall, I believe every child deserves a great experience in their education process, along with receiving all of the necessary information that develops them into functional, intelligent human beings. This is a major responsibility and is up to the teacher to provide them as such. I plan to humbly take on this roll.
Gabrielle
I hope all is well! My mind has been a little distracted today, because I am greatly looking forward to this weekend. It's going to be beautiful and, I don't know about you, but I need some warmth and sunshine in my life right about now. This week was our first classroom experience at Washington Elementary. I can already tell it's going to be a fantastic time for all of us. Monday was mainly an observation day and it was slightly hectic, because the teacher I was assigned with was out and had a substitute. He handled the process well, but I did not feel like the experience was an adequate representation of these students' normal lives. So, I'm looking forward to Monday.
When Grace and I were in the classroom on Tuesday, students were in Literacy/Language Arts class. They were broken up into groups and switched stations between independent reading, group reading, and phonics. This was quite an eye-opening experience. I witnessed many excelled students, but there were about two children who, as told by the teacher, were on a Kindergarten reading level (They're in 2nd grade). I saw this student struggle so hard at trying to pronounce sounds like /j/ and /y/. It honestly broke my heart, and I wondered what events had led up to this child's life to cause him to be so behind everyone else, if there even were any events or if it was purely biological.
Pertaining to struggling readers, I found a series of videos from this website: http://www.readingrockets.org/helping/struggle that observes a biological view of the brain in order to further understand why students struggle with reading. It was informative and presented facts in an easy-to-follow manner. I strongly recommend watching at least the first 2 videos. This is relevant to our class because reading is basis of learning. A student cannot read math word problems, read about historians, locate geographical places, interpret scientific information, etc. without being able to identify and produce proper sounds. Being able to classify struggling readers and what their specific struggle is, is crucial to the differentiation process and relates back to our lesson on performance tasks. Performance tasks show what students know and what they can do. In my future classroom, I cannot be a functional, exceeding teacher without even considering this teaching aspect. It would be impossible for a teacher to teach if he/she does not know what level his/her students are on. When you know what your "dealing with," then learning can more likely be facilitated, which applies to NCPTS IV. Instruction must be appropriate, relatable, and varied so ALL students get an adequate education.
Overall, I believe every child deserves a great experience in their education process, along with receiving all of the necessary information that develops them into functional, intelligent human beings. This is a major responsibility and is up to the teacher to provide them as such. I plan to humbly take on this roll.
Gabrielle
Gabby, This is an awesome sentence!!! "Overall, I believe every child deserves a great experience in their education process, along with receiving all of the necessary information that develops them into functional, intelligent human beings." - Yes, this is the essence of a great teacher. Thank you for being so clear with your blogs - you make it really easy for the reader to follow. Keep making those connections.
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