Classroom Reflection Essay

I wondered how they came up with the idea to use their hands to make bubbles. Orlando said “all you need is a circle shape and you can make a bubble”. I asked them if they could use any other shapes to make bubbles and they started making other shape with their hands like diamonds and triangles and tried to blow bubbles. Once the other children saw them doing this they all wanted to try making bubbled with their hands. Staff thought that this was such a neat idea they even tried it but the bubbles would not work for them. During this experience the children were learning and building on many different skills they were using their co-operation to work together and create the bubbles. They were helping others learn how to use their hands to blow bubbles. They were also using their patterning and problem solving skills. To expand on this staff add different materials that the children could

In WPC 101 this semester I learned that I need to work on my public speaking skills. Over the course of this semester there was many assignments where I had present to the class. I learned that I need to fix common habits I do while presenting. I often say the word “like” while public speaking and I tend to lose my train of thought. Additionally I learned that my true passion is helping other people. My classmates would often ask for help on math and whenever I was able to resolve their questions I felt very proud of myself. Being able to help my peers has motivated me even more to get a degree in law because like to help small business’ defend themselves from a legal standpoint. Lastly, I learned that organization is my strongest skill. Being organized allows me to think more clearly and get tasks done more quickly.

This way I can be a source of knowledge rather than a teacher who fills the students head with knowledge. This technique should also be able to direct students’ enquiries as well as allow them to ask their own questions and follow what directions their enquiries about Science might take them. My next key learning element would be the value of group work and the peer collaboration between students to enable better understanding about the topic being investigated or the experiment being conducted. My other key learning experience that was gained from this lesson was the determination of what prior learning had the students done on a particular subject so that their constructs can be added to or modified to achieve better scientific results. My thoughts are that, even more careful planning has to go into a design and make (discovery learning) lesson than into a mere investigation through books and the internet. These tasks increase student motivation and the willingness to accept Science as practical, necessary and important in today’s modern

The lesson began from the moment I walked in the door; students had the chance to see the ooblick inside the pans, which drew their curiosity right away. The mentor teacher advised me to prepare the ooblick ahead of time, prior to teaching the lesson. Once I entered the class, I told students I was going to play a video that tells the story of “Bartholomew and Ooblick” written by Dr. Seuss. Once the video was over, I head to the front of the class and wrote on the board: Is ooblick solid or liquid? I have already talked to the mentor teacher about student’s prior knowledge and she had stated that they have an idea about the substance, but she felt that they didn’t have a deep understanding of the matter. Students were curious to know what we were going to do with the mixture that I brought it in. Hence, it was easy to engage students before asking the lesson driving question. Once the question was written I asked a student to read the question out loud, in

In December of 2013, I was told that I was not considered for the full-time temporary faculty position in political science on South Campus by Dr. Sonia Nieves because I was not able to teach international relations even though I have graduate level coursework in international relations and Political Science degrees do not specify a focus. I later found out that, this requirement was false and inconsistent with Broward College’s Faculty Credentialing Manual and that Dr. Nieves hired an adjunct faculty member from another campus who had the same degree as me. This left me in the middle of December with no classes for the upcoming spring term despite my ability and record to fill my classes and outstanding reviews by students and supervisors. Dr. Neves also mentioned to me, on several occasions, that it was always a major scheduling “hassle” to be forced to find a downstairs classroom in order to accommodate my ADA needs.

2) Did the activity go as planned? Why or why not? Overall the lesson went I as planned for it to go. The students enjoyed the activity and were easily engaged it in. The students asked lots of questions that showed they were thinking about what we were doing and trying to figure out how it worked. Something that I didn’t anticipate was some of the children had an issue with touching the wet cotton balls. They didn’t like the feel or texture, so I had to help them complete the activity. It was definitely easier to work with the smaller groups, two or three students, than the bigger

This particular lesson plan focused on place values, in particular the tens and ones place value. The goal of the lesson was to have the students identify the place values or any two-digit number. This particular skill was something that the student had been working on in their classroom. After we started the lesson the students informed me that they had just gone over place values the week before. Although the students had been introduced to the concept of place values, they were not at a mastery level yet. However I feel that a majority of students were at the level after this lesson. During the lesson, the majority of the students seemed to grasp the concept of place value, although a few of the students where struggling with the skill.

As a result of teaching this lesson and feedback you received from the student, what have you learned that will help you?

1.The learning experience did not differ much from the original lesson, but a few changes were made due to my availability of resources. I did not read the book, Rocks and How to Use Them by Pine and Levine. I was unable to get the book for the lesson, but instead of reading this book, I allowed students to first think of uses of rocks and soils on their own, then discussed resources around the room that could possibly have rocks or soils as the main ingredient.

There are several factors that influenced my planning and teaching when creating this lesson segment for my fourth grade class. There are several factors that I had to consider about my students by knowing what they are capable of doing and not able to do. In order to consider the academic development of my students I had to take these factors into consideration: out of the 26 students in the class, seven students are English language learners, seven proficient English speakers, and six redesignated English Speakers The majority of these students come from Spanish speaking homes and are reading below grade level. Given the information I have about my students, my choices of instructional strategies, materials, and the sequences of the learning tasks reflect the student’s backgrounds, interests, and needs in various ways. Taking all of these factors

After revision and revision I perfected my think aloud lesson plan and was very confident going into this lesson and was very pleased with the outcome! I feel as though the students learned from my lesson in many ways. I know they learned from this lesson because they were using sentences with the new words they learned about. They also were telling other friends who did not get to participate in the activity about frogs and the facts they learned! It was awesome!

Assess the lesson by bringing in a variety of toys that can be placed in water, such as rubber balls of different weights, frisbees, toy boats, and so on. Ask students, "Which of these toys would sink in a swimming pool and which would float?"

Science learning of the flow chart for an experiment, that they will be doing next week. Made sure they understood every detail of how the experiment would be conducted. They all understood that if one thing was done wrong or missed that they experiment would not turn out. They were answering the work sheet with all the right answers and had the understanding of the steps that they were to follow. The teacher seemed to be teaching the very well because the worksheet showed that they had listened to her in the week before. They were very strong in the knowledge of the steps of the experiment.

Initially, the students responded well to the lesson and were focused. I began the lesson by asking the students about the movie, Jurassic Park. The student become engaged immediately and I had to take a minute to refocus the class before continuing on the with the lesson. The movie was popular among the students and familiar. The dinosaurs in the movie were computer generated models, CG. I pointed out that the creation of CG characters was a marriage of math and science. Computer science creates the model; however, the animals need to appear the correct size which requires math. Scientist are not old men in lab coats toiling over a microscope, scientists are inventing new technologies, creating digital monsters, and changing the world. A few students struggled to refocus and were distracted, but were easily returned to task with personal attention. I was pleasantly surprised when a student I had previous struggled with focused on the task and engaged in this lesson. She completed the sample graph, and then asked for assistance completing her project graph.

For my second lesson, I decided to conduct a math lesson as I had never conducted a math lesson in an elementary classroom let alone a 3rd grade classroom. I discussed with my CT what math concept I could teach that pertained to one of the 3rd grade standards. My CT told me that I could introduce the new concept of area to the class on the Friday that I was supposed to teach my lesson. I knew that that introducing a new topic on a Friday in an elementary classroom was not ideal as the majority of teachers that I have observed in the past usually wrap up their week’s lessons on Friday. The Friday I was conducting my lesson was also a shorten day due to Fall Break, so I thought the students would show some off task behavior for the early release day. These circumstances made me think hard about how I was going to introduce the concept of area to the students in an effective way. I knew that I needed to have a lesson that included an exploratory hands- on activity to keep the students engaged and wanting to learn. Therefore, I decided to use cheese crackers as manipulatives to represent square units. The students were to first guess what the area of the different shapes in a worksheet packet were and then they were to use the crackers to figure out the actually area of the different shapes.