Reflection #7

In Ms.B's classroom this week everything was seemingly normal. In the beginning of class the students walk in with the teacher and then they unpack their backpacks. They get their home work out of their bags and turn it in. next they should switch out their books. In the classroom they are trying to so a 100 book challenge. So every day students read a new book and try to complete the challenge. After they get a book they are supposed to sit at their desk and read quietly until the morning announcements come on. After the morning announcements they go to related arts.

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I decided to try something new this week and go to a related arts that I had never been to, Technology. Technology was interesting but also very fun. I could tell the children liked it a lot and were very into it. The teacher was also very nice. In technology the students came in and knew exactly what to do. They went to their computers and got started on a game. This was kind of like a warm up to let the kids get all their gitters out of them. They played games for about 15 minutes. Next they went and sat on the carpet at the front of the classroom. This is something they don't do that often. They normally stay at their seats and the teacher uses a software that lets her operate their computers from her own computer. While they were on the carpet the teacher explained what they would be doing that day, typing games!!

The students went to their computers and began playing the games. They were only allowed to play certain games. I had to help out a few students because they were on the wrong game or they had put the difficulty to high and was not doing well on the game.

As soon as the entire class got back from related arts they started math. They went right into centers. They were the same centers as last week except that instead of students working at their desk they were working at the big desk in the back with Ms. B. I decided to sit and work with a group of students on a game. I saw there was only five students and they had to be in pairs so I partnered with the one student left out.  The game was you had 18 chips and I had to take as many away as I wanted (you would be turned away) and then you had to figure out how many chips I took away. We played the game together for the entire time(15 minutes)

The next day I went to Art for related arts. The class that I was with was really behind and I had to help them make geometric forms out of paper. The shapes were; a cube, cone, pyramid, and cylinder. When they all finished with making the shapes they wrote their names on them and turned them in. By the time they finished there was maybe 5-10 mins left so the students got to go to centers. Center include; computers, free drawing, tracing and playing with clay.

When we came back from the related arts the class began working on math. The class is working on even and odd numbers. Ms.B asked the class questions about even and odd and even gave real life examples. She asked the class If there were 11 students in a classroom and the teacher told them all to find a partner would each person have a partner? She had the class figure that out and then she demonstrated it with 11 actual students.

The last day of the week that I was there I went to Art again. I was with a different class this day so we were working on something different then what we were working on the day before. This day the students were working on  finishing up their playgrounds. (The shapes they made the day before are for the playground) This class was almost done with their playgrounds. The teacher however wanted more. She wanted the students to put people in the playgrounds. She also wanted them to have a sign (enter/exit or hours of operation). I really liked this project for the children, it gave them creative freedom. although they all started out with the same basic shapes no ones playground/ skate park/ water park looked the same.

In the classroom this day we did something that I had never done before. I knew the class had done it before but I hadn't. We did an experiment called "How Many Pockets?" Each person had to count their pockets and got a snap-cube for each of the pockets that they had. After all the pockets were counted, everybody had to find a partner that together would add up to 10. for example I had 2 pockets and Ms. B had 8 pockets so we partnered up and made 10. Almost everyone had a partner except two people. In total the amount of pockets we had were 98. Previously when they did this there was only 58 and 69. We assumed that we had more pockets this time because of our jackets. (It was very chilly that day almost everyone had a jacket).