Reflection #6

I couldn't be in Ms. B's classroom on the first day this week. They went on a field trip and I couldn't go with them so I went into a fist grade classroom. The first grade classroom was so much different then the 2nd grade classroom I am normally in. The teacher is different, the curriculum is different, and especially the students are different.

This was my second week in Ms. B's classroom. It was a pretty ordinary week. The children start every day the same, they get into class, turn in their homework, change their books and unpack their backpacks. After they are done with that they sit and read at their desk. The morning news comes on and they watch that till it ends. After it ends they line up for Related Arts. On the second day this week I went with the children to art. In art they were painting clay frogs. The teacher handed each student their frog and the table captain got paint, paint brushes and water for the table. The students began painting their frogs as soon as they got them.

After the students were done the frogs had to be wrapped so they could be safely taken home. I helped wrap the frogs. The class was well behaved and lined up for wrapping if there was more then one or two people there. As the students and I were leaving the teacher thanked me and was really appreciative of the help I gave her today.

The next day the same routine happened. I went to art again too. The same project was going on but with a different class. I helped out in the same way but was a little more efficient since I didn't need much instruction today. This group of kids was less well behaved then the children yesterday. This class was very rowdy and couldn't seem to settle down. After they finished painting their frogs they didn't line up at the back table they just bunched around and it was very chaotic. When it was time for the kids to line up it took them a very long time to clean up and get in line. In the process of doing this 5+ kids dropped their frog multiple times.

Image from Flickr: Jimmie

When the children got back from R.A, they normally do math on the carpet, but today they got white boards and markers out and stayed at their desks. The teacher asked them where they were on a scale of 0-4 on how well they can solve addition and subtraction problems with out knowing the original value. For example If I have 8 pencils and you have 4 more then me how many do you have? Most students were about a 1 or 2 on the scale. After they worked out a problem together on the white boards they split up into centers. One center was a math game, another is working at their desk on notebook pages, another was working on handout pages. This was my first time seeing the children work in math centers and I am glad I got to see it.


I hope I get to see more of the centers in the coming weeks. I also want to have more responsibility in the classroom like grading papers or tests.