Classroom Reflection

The goal in every math classroom is for students to achieve automaticity, flexibility, and ultimately accuracy. For each student to excel in the classroom, he or she must first have strong foundational skills in place. This process was challenging for me, but not because I did not understand the needs of the student or how to remediate. The challenge for me, was that I was placed in a kindergarten classroom and struggled to find someone that would provide me with student errors to complete this assignment. Therefore, my reflection is one of an outsider, who has not had the privilege of working with the students or seeing the teacher in action in the classroom. My experience consisted of receiving weekly texts of student work to review, analyze, identify errors, and provide insight to how I would remediate in the classroom.

My time spent in the Clinical setting, so far, has been extremely inciteful as to how to become a better educator in a classroom setting. Through the data I collected I was able to connect Borich’s Seven Variables of learning to the students. By being in the clinical setting for nearly two months, I have been exposed to new ways of thinking when it comes to structuring a classroom and instructing a classroom. Within this reflection you will find out how I would better plan an effective lesson for the pupils in my future classroom. You will also discover what I will do about certain issues in the classroom and how I will address/fix them.

one. Ms. Cochran starts with having all students stretch and prepare for their activity. For the most part her activities involve working collaboratively in groups. The students are allowed to interact differently with one another compared to the classroom. Students are free to yell at the top of their lungs and run around without being punished. The students seem to interact more with each other in this class. I think overall this class requires and needs student to be interactive in order to be successful.

Over the next several pages I will discuss many aspects of education. This will include the role that I am employed, the demographics of the area I work in and specific responsibilities I have as a paraprofessional. I will explore the classroom setting I am in, including the relationship to my students, supervisors, and other disciplines within the educational system.

1. After it was all said and done, the presentation was a success in the fact that a good sample of the technology was out to all. The slides appeared to be in a good order that flowed well with the presentation. It was simple and straight forward, and it was in keeping with the technology that I was presenting. Interesting and not so much boring. I like the video clip of the technology that I was presenting. It was a good length and clear audio that was easily understood at the back of the class.

As part of the district’s goal to increase student engagement in the classroom, teachers are asked prioritize relationships when handling discipline rather than to use solely punitive measures. To support this initiative, the district has called upon Dr. JoAnn Freiberg from the State Department of Education. For the past two years, Dr. Freiberg has provided training to all administrators and any new teacher entering the district. The idea is to create the capacity amongst staff to use strategies that will allow students to recognize their wrongdoing and think about what they can do differently in future situations. This notion requires a shift in mindset away from simply punishing students every infraction.

This semester I will be tutoring Aidan. Aidan is eight years old and is currently in the third grade at Rayburn Elementary. I chose to tutor Aidan for many reasons. The first is my interest in working with ESL students. Aidan was born in Mexico, and learned Spanish before he learned English. Aidan told me that although he spoke Spanish when he was younger, he no longer speaks Spanish. Although Aidan now only speaks English, this background will still most likely have an influence on how he reads. I have tutored ESL students before, and am curious to see how many ESL characteristics Aidan will display while reading. I was also drawn to Aidan because of his attitude. I have been observing in Aidan’s class for several weeks now as part of my Field Based training, and so I have been able to watch him interact with others in a classroom setting. Aidan seems to be bright and inquisitive, however he sometimes has a hard time understanding what he is supposed to do on math problems-especially when they are word problems. However, even when he is struggling, he seems willing to try, and that willing attitude is what made me want to tutor him.

Throughout the semester, I had a chance to be able to work on all of my goals in almost every combination but still feel I can work on them more. Over the semester I have noticed a lot that I have worked on but still end up freaking out every chance when it came to executing the midterm and final.From taking Modern I my third time I wanted to able to gain insight from each time I took the course.This semester I felt like I took a different approach towards being able to grasp the material as well as having a clear focus what I needed and wished to work on. Evaluating over the course of the semester shows my goals that I wanted to As I continue with taking modern classes in the future there is something that I can always make progress on to keep on improving and be more confident.

I have been working in Mrs. Bogner’s 5th grade classroom at Columbus Elementary in Edwardsville, IL. The class itself has a mix of different learning abilities, ranging from very low level students to very high level students. Although it is not considered an inclusion class, there are have multiple students in our classroom who spend a majority of the school day in a special resources classroom where they get extra help in subjects such as math, reading, and English, but then come back into our classroom for subjects such as social studies and science. Certain students may go to the special resource class for just one subject, while other students go in for multiple. My CT classifies all of the students in the class into three different level learning groups for each subject: average, which is the normal 5th grade level, above average or high, and below average or low. When picking a student to work with, my CT and I decided it would be a perfect opportunity for me to work with a lower-level math student who struggles with most concepts. By doing this, I would not only be getting my assignment done, but I would also be helping him with the assignment itself and making sure he was answering the problems correctly. After working through the assignment with him, I reported back to my CT about any concepts he struggled with so she could know what he still needs a little extra work on.

While all my courses at the University of Northern Iowa are important and have taught me a great deal, there are three classes I feel prepared me the most for student teaching and as a future teacher. One of these classes is Classroom Assessment. This course taught me how to create assessments that are as fair as possible and to relate them to the exact content that is being taught. I also learned to incorporate the eight multiple intelligences into assessment. Not all assessments have to be pencil and paper and they should not because some students cannot show their learned knowledge this way. One idea that was stressed in this course is that fair isn't always equal; this is something that has stuck with me ever since.

When I arrived to my classroom today, Mrs. Beach’s students were still at their special. This gave us about ten minutes to talk about my upcoming less. Mrs. Beach would like me to teach my lesson on October 24. I am not certain which standard I will be teaching, but I do know that I will be teaching students how to solve story problems using the standard subtraction algorithm. I am excited to teach this lesson, but I am also very nervous because I don’t know exactly how to introduce this topic to the students. At 10:10 A.M., the students returned to the classroom, grabbed their math baskets and sat down at their desks. I am constantly amazed at how well behaved these students are. I cannot to learn more about the management strategies that Mrs. Beach implements in her class.

In my position as a vice president of curriculum programs, I visit many diverse educational settings in public and charter schools, both large urban and small rural districts. Daily, I face issues of race, gender, culture, socioeconomic class, and disability. Because I work with diverse students and a multicultural workforce, my reflection regarding powerful social and cultural influences leads me to two different conclusions. The first is that many children in the schools I visit are disadvantaged. They are born into immigrant and transient families and live in communities that rank in the lowest socio-economic strata in the country.

One concept we discussed during class was the demographics of the school not aligning with the demographics of the teachers. A main point we talked about was how a lot of younger grades were taught mostly by white, female teachers. This negatively impacts students of color and their feelings surrounding school and forces an invisible tax on teachers of color working at underrepresented schools. In the school I did my field experience in, Chelsea Heights Elementary school, I noticed this point very clearly. Of all the staff I interacted with who taught at the school, five of them appeared to be white women, one was a woman of color, and two were white men. It was also interesting to note that the woman of color was a paraprofessional, and only interacted with one student at the end of the day. Both of the male teachers were specialist teachers, and taught physical education and science, which are stereotypically male subjects. In the group of homeroom teachers the class I observed interacted with, all three teachers were white and female. Compared to my field experience class, where over half of the students were students of color, this staff ratio was clearly disproportionate to the actual student population. By observing this information, I was able to actually visualize what we talked about in class, and see the population difference between teachers and students.

Throughout this English course we have created two different projects thus far. Our first project consisted writing about our literacy sponsor and allowed us to think back to how we developed our literary skills. The second projected consisted of finding a rhetorical statement from a source that affects the Charleston population. Our final project was taking one of the two projects above and changing the medium of it. My rhetorical statement was about how technology should be used in the classroom for younger generations to improve their learning development. Having this topic, I automatically thought about an interesting way to change the medium versus the topic from my first project. I created an article that would be found in a parenting magazine.

One of the most difficult things to master while teaching is classroom management. Through my experience I have noticed how easily a classroom of seventeen first graders can get off task, but also how easily a teacher can help guide their focus back on task.