Lake Middle School Observation Paper

On August 5, 2016 at 6:20 am I held Aaron Mills after the morning check in to discuss a situation that arose at Annandale High School. Present at the meeting was Craig Carney, Liaison and Steve Passino, HVAC Supervisor. The previous day Aaron was responding to a service call for the Athletic Directors office area Rooftop B1. Upon arrival at the jobsite I twice questioned Aaron if he had thoroughly checked out the Rooftop unit. Aaron responded “YES”. I then asked if he had checked the Freon charges in the system and Aaron responded “NO” as this is critical to a units operation. Prior to our arrival Aaron had informed Joe Lanham and Ed Bowler that everything was checked out on the Rooftop unit. While inspecting Rooftop B1 Steve Passino asked

Miss Kane’s first grade class at Lutie Lewis Coates Elementary School (also known as Coates Elementary) has twenty students and seventeen of them are considered English Language Learners (ELL) (E. Kane, Personal Communication, October 4, 2016). This is very frustrating for both Miss. Kane and her students because it is very difficult to communicate with many of her ELLs. Out of Miss Kane’s twenty students eight students are Hispanic, five Indian, five Black, and three White. Miss Kane’s class is very diverse and this allows students to feel more accepted because not all students are similar. Coates Elementary as a whole is very diverse: Asian 28.86%, Black 18.26%, Hispanic 37.32%, and White 12.08% (Fairfax County Public Schools, 2015). Miss Kane’s classroom reflects similar diversity as Coates Elementary does. Both Miss. Kane and the Coates staff really show their appreciation for diversity and attempt to treat all children equally giving all students equal opportunity. Coates Elementary is a Title I school; about fifty percent of students receive free and reduced lunch (Fairfax County Public Schools, 2015). This school was placed in the center of poverty and many of these students who participate in the free and reduced lunch program are English Language Learners.

On Thursday, June 16th all 4th grade classes from Hanscom Middle School got their Every Kid in the Park passes, learned about the Centennial and met park rangers too boot. A neighbor of Minute Man National Historical Park, Hanscom Middle School is located on the adjacent Hanscom Air Force Base, located in the towns of Bedford, Lincoln and Lexington, Massachusetts. 50 students were awarded their passes as well as peppering rangers with questions about the National Park Service.

During my naturalistic observation, I was at my sister’s softball game at the field behind Bridgeport Middle School. There were two identical twins little girls, who were three years old, playing together in the practice batting cage. In the beginning, they were walking around together, eating popsicles while they watched two other older kids, a boy and a girl most likely around the age range of five to seven, chasing each other. The older kids were playing tag and invited the twins to join them. From their facial expressions, it was obvious they were thrilled to play with them; however they were hesitant to run and chase the older kids. They stood at the starting location and watched as the other kids raced back and forth, and had to move

This type of dilemma happens in public schools all across the United States. If I were the third year first-grade teacher, first, I would do some research to find data that supports that mixed socio-economic classrooms are better learning environments for all students. Then, I would make arrangements to meet with the school counselor since counselors are usually in charge of classroom scheduling. I

For the Fall of 2016, I worked at Cornatzer Elementary School in Davie County. Cornatzer Elementary School was a Title I school where 60% of the students were considered economically disadvantaged and qualified for free/reduced lunch. I worked in a 1st grade classroom that was composed of 25 students; out of those 25, 15 were male and 10 were female. The majority of the class was Caucasian; however, there were 4 Hispanic children, and 1 of two or more races. During a typical week, we had 5 children who received pull out services. Specifically, we had one student who qualified for English Language Learner (ELL) services, 3 students who solely needed speech services, and 1 student who received speech and behavior interventions.

Currently, general education classrooms have increasingly become diverse with both disable students and students from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. In order for educators to ensure that they effectively teach these classrooms, meet the needs of each student both successfully and individually, effective research that is based on strategies need to be implemented. The U.S. Department of Education suggest that, the current school-age population is becoming more diverse as time passes, yet, majority of the teachers in these schools are white non-Hispanic women. According to another report by The Condition of Education in 2006, American schools are portraying increased diversity and growth. The report suggested that, forty two percent of students in public schools were ethnic or racial minorities in the year 2003; this increased from twenty two percent since 1972. Owing to these reasons, teachers in these schools are expected to educate a diversified class of students including those that come from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Teachers are therefore, required to implement a number of key strategies that will ensure that every student in specific classroom feels that he or she belongs there (Worrell, 2010).

When focusing in on the specific classroom that I am working in, there is a 1-23 teacher to student ratio, with fourteen boys and nine girls that are all considered general education students. The class consists of 15 students being Hispanic, 4 students being Asian/Middle Easter, 2 African American

Diversity encompasses numerous characteristics including socio-economic background, ethnicity, special needs, gender, and giftedness (Cazden, 2001). Today, classrooms are getting more varied and diverse with students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, and students with a disability. It appears that teachers must meet the needs of all students successfully and individually to effectively teach a classroom of diverse students. This paper will first identify three challenges involved with ensuring that teaching strategies are

The setting is Washington Elementary School in West Orange, NJ. The grade I picked is first grade. The age group in the class is between the ages of five and seven. The subjects they learn are math, language arts, social studies, and writing. But they focus more on reading and math throughout the day. There are 8 girls and 8 boys in the classroom which makes 16 students in total. The class is divided into three racial and ethnic groups which are Latino or Hispanic, African Americans, and Asian American. There are about 1 Asian American, 6 Latino or Hispanic, and 9 African Americans.

“Everyone will need a sleeping bag, 4 long pants, 2 shorts, 6 of each undergarments, 6 pairs of socks, flip flops, a pair of tennis shoes, a pair of hiking shoes, two trash bags, 2 suitcases, non-scented lotion, a backpack, a towel, a comb, 6 shirts, bug spray, sunscreen, toothbrush, toothpaste, a jacket, a swimming suit, and a pair of pajamas. You must get all of these supplies into your suitcases with your names on them by tomorrow morning. We will load them all into a moving truck,” said Miss.Ou.

You might be thinking why do we do experiments in science? Why not simply learn things and move on? But in true, science is all about experiments and in middle school we do lots and lots of experiments. For example, one experiment we performed is the pink string activity. In that experiment you have to get a rope and wrap it around you and your partner's hands and twist the string. By using teamwork and strategy you and your partner have to untwist the strings without taking the string off your wrist. It was really exciting to problem solve to try and untwist the string. Another experiment we did was Saving Sammy where you get a small container and put a Lifesaver gummy under the container and a gummy worm at the top. By only using a paperclip

The school that I am observing has an enrollment of 561 students. Out of the 561 students, only 42% qualify for free/reduced lunch. There is still little to no diversity in this school. 90% of the school’s students are white. However, in addition to the 90%, there are an additional 9% of students in this school that are to be considered a part of a minority group. Only 2% of the school’s population is Hispanic, and another 5% is African American. The teacher to student ratio for this school is 18/1. This ratio is higher than the average student to teacher ratio in Missouri, and that ratio is 14/1. Furthermore, the percentage of students with IEP’s that attend this school is 11.5%. Surprisingly, there is only on student in the entire school

The students in the fifth-grade classroom where I taught the two-day science lesson seemed to understand the objectives of the lesson fully. Throughout the lesson, I offered multiple opportunities for discussion and critical thinking from when the lesson first started, and until the lesson ended. During the first day of the lesson there was a section of it where the students had to debate or argue against one another if they thought they were incorrect with where they were placing their sort card. The student who wanted to debate against the placement had to present his or her own reasoning and evidence as to why the card should not have been placed there. I made sure to get every student involved with the card sort even if they did not debate against other students, he or she still had to present their own reasoning why they placed the card under the specific heading. All of the students during this time seemed to be highly engaged, and had no difficulty debating whether something was correct or incorrect. For the second day of the lesson when the students were asked to share their Venn diagrams most of them wanted to share what they had written or drawn on their diagram to the whole class. When we had our

Teachers have seen that there is an increase of diversity in their classrooms. As teachers, we need to learn how to work with the different ethnicity and backgrounds we interact with every day. Many of these students are underrepresented in certain areas of education, while other students are overrepresented in certain areas as well. The two racial/ethnic groups I want to focus on are Hispanic or Latino students and Asian/Pacific Islanders.