This past field experience was one that was more relaxed than others. We spent a portion of the time outdoors on the playground during their bonus recess time. This at first seemed irrelevant to things inside the classroom, but I began to notice who each of the students were hanging around out on the playground, as well as what kinds of things they did while outside. It was interesting to see that the playground was almost exactly divided in half; boys on one side playing soccer, and girls on the other side on the equipment. I took the time to notice how my kidwatching student was interacting with the other students. She seemed to be laughing and playing along with a big group of girls all of whom were interacting with the other sixth grade teacher. This was good to see that she was being with friends, and having a nice time.

In class we began working on our digital stories. Our group decided to create a digital story based around "how to make a pb&j sandwich." I will be interested to see how all of these turn out. I attempted to create one in W200 last year, however, I became frustrated with Window's Movie Maker, and hastily rushed through. Needless to say, I did not do very well on the project. Hopefully this time I will do better.

November 10th class and Field Experience

During my November 10th field experience, I struggled with helping a student with his grammar. I felt very bad, and disappointed in myself that I could be a great help to him, because I did not know the material myself. His teacher said that he had been asking if someone could help him with his grammar for a while, so I took him in the hall with his worksheet. When he would ask specific questions about sentence structure etc. I did not know how to answer his questions. I did the best that I could, and hoped that he got something out of it. This was sort of discouraging, however I realized that there are going to be things that I simply do not know as a teacher. I know that before I teach certain material, I will be going over it, and will be better prepared, but this was just one thing that I could not be as beneficial with.

I am excited to work on a published piece. I think that it is a great idea for students to do something like this, because it allows them to work hard on something, and then feel the accomplishment of seeing it finished and polished. This can give students motivation, because they know they are creating good, and valuable work. They will feel proud to have written and made something that looks great. I think it will be fun to choose something of my own to create this way as well.

Kidwatching Interview

This past field experience, I interviewed my "Kidwatching kid" about her experiences with reading, and writing, and how things such as her family, peers, interests, and self-views came into play for those two things. I really enjoyed this! It gave me a chance to get to know her, and really see things in her perspective. She eventually really opened up to me, more than I thought she might, but I gained a lot of helpful insight to her views on literature. Many of the things she told me were very much like what we have been learning in regards to making literature appealing for students. With that being said, she mentioned things such as really enjoying reading and writing when it is a choice made by her, rather than required. She loved reading fiction and graphic novels, anything that allows her to use her imagination. She said she really loves writing, but only if it allows her to be creative, she does not enjoy writing prompts assigned by the teacher. She enjoys writing in her writers notebook, because she can simply get all of her ideas out without having to be so stringent on editing. All of this I found really interesting, because it was things that I had been learning about in class, and it was being proven in front of my eyes!

The MGRP visuals I found to be great! I was very impressed with all of the posters of those in our class. Not only was I impressed with the visuals and different genres, but simply the topic itself. I thought it was great to see what people felt passionate about in order to create this rather large project. I loved seeing the creativity in the posters, and the creativity of the genres, i enjoyed asking questions, because many of the students seemed to have a really great knowledge of their subject, so it was great to learn about such a wide variety of seemingly random topics.

Activities with poetry

I loved the poetry projects we were able to create during last class! I loved taking time to be creative, using so many different materials, words, and thoughts, all based around poetry. When it was time to share, I actually did not want to stop working. It is not often that I get to use my creativity, so sometimes it feels like a burden, however when time to do things such as that is built in with other things, it is SO great! I really think that those types of projects are a great thing to use in the classroom, both with poetry and other types of literature, or perhaps even science or history. Art and music can be integrated into any subject if you simply get creative. I really enjoyed the station using magazine clippings of words to create a poem. This was neat, because it reminded me of the story the whales that we read out of order (in either this class, or 340), in the sense that all of the words were taken out of what each author had put them in, to create something new and different, but completely legitimate.

This is not necessarily directed at this class, although I am attending an IPS school this Friday for my E300 field experience. I am very much looking forward to this, because I have never been in a urban school setting. I feel that this will give me a more diverse look at schools and education, which will only benefit me as a future teacher.

This past week at University, we worked one on one with the fourth grade students for their Writing Workshop. This was great! Although the room was a little crowded, we got to see what this was like in an actual elementary classroom. We were able to also see how creative some of the students could be, and ask questions of the teacher facilitating this. It was wonderful to hear that the children were not corrected on spelling or grammar when writing in these notebooks. These were used purely for the enjoyment and creativity of writing, which I feel makes them really enjoy it. Pushing the students to brainstorm many different ideas is an important aspect of this workshop, because it allows the students to expand their thinking a little bit, without any restrictions. It also allows them to maybe go back and use some of the ideas that they came up with earlier, but chose not to expand on. It was good to see the students excited about writing, and having fun with creating stories.

In class on Wednesday, while working with the newspaper genres and creating our own based on our MGRP, I got some really good ideas for my own project! It was awesome to see what everyone came up with. It allowed me to see the term 'genre' in a more concrete way, because I was actually sort of struggling with what five I would do. Now that I have more ideas, I can use those and apply them to my topic. It was great!

Reflection

In this week's field experience, I was placed in another teachers classroom because of schedule conflict from ISTEP. The room I was in had an exceptional teacher. I was only in that room for roughly an hour, but I could already tell this was a teacher I would want to model myself after. She was laid back, but firm, fun, but serious. I could tell that she wanted the kids to succeed, but she didn't want to 'scare' them into doing so. I feel that it was beneficial to be in that room, if only for a short while, because it allowed me to see that there are teachers like that out there, and that I can be one of them. It is something to mold myself after, while still being true and unique to myself and my own beliefs. It is important to not only realize that every student learns in a different way, but that every teacher also teaches in a different way.

I am also excited about our research paper for this class, because I have chosen to write about a country. The country that I choose will hopefully be the country I will do a portion of my student teaching in. I am fairly certain that I will participate in the cultural immersions project in the spring of 2012, and I am very excited about that. It will be very interesting to see how educational systems are run in other cultures and countries.

Reflection

After my third time at field experience, myself and the other two IU students, were finally able to interact more with the students. Although it was simply milling around the room, making ourselves available to answer questions, it was great to be able to be thinking like a teacher. I was able to brainstorm and guide students by asking them questions about what they wanted to convey in their own papers. This was interesting to me, because rather than telling them what was right and what was wrong, I asked them questions on what they wanted, and how they would go about doing that. It was not an easy task for myself, because I do not have a great knowledgeable background on the history of Ancient Greeks. I had to put a lot of thought into what sort of ideas I was giving the students, because I wanted to make sure they were beneficial and legitimate.

Reflecting on my teaching experiences in our class, I feel that it is much more difficult to teach to a group of peers your own age, as opposed to children at an elementary age. When teaching to peers, I feel that there is a thought that they will not gain anything by what the student is teaching, when in fact it is done to benefit the person teaching the lesson. This is what we have to realize as students working to become teachers. The purpose of the lessons we teach in class, are not to provide information to our peers, but to better ourselves and allow us to gain insight on what it will be like in our future classrooms.