Reflection Class Reflection

Everyone is likely to experience some form of discrimination or prejudice; as is anyone capable of acting prejudiced towards others. On April 5th, 1968, a teacher in Riceville, Iowa named Jane Elliot conducted an experiment with her third grade class that dealt with the concept of discrimination; and was documented in Peters’ 1985 ‘A Class Divided’. The exercise originally took place the day after Martin Luther King was assassinated. The documentary is an eye opener to the world of racism and discrimination. Bucher (2010) describes racism as “discrimination based on the belief that one race is superior to another” (97). According to Bucher (2010) “discrimination is defined as the

I had my appointment on the previous week at the Writing center. I brought my 2nd project for ENGL 160 class. I scheduled tutor to “face to face”, because I think it is the best way to improve all of my mistakes. Before going to Writing center, I was thinking that this tutor doesn’t help me at all, but fortunately my thoughts was wrong and I enjoyed 1 hour of editing my project.

For my Field Experience I chose to observe at Krahn Elementary which is a part of Klein Independent School District. After my approval, I was assigned to four teachers and their classrooms. I observed at Krahn Elementary on six Tuesdays between 15 September 2015 and 27 October 2015, and more or less followed the schedule that was given to me by the Assistant Principal Ms. Shannon Strole. From 8:30 am to 9:15 am I observed Ms. Judy Burkes, who is a third grade Math and Science teacher. Her classroom is comprised of twenty students which range from average to below average learners and a student with ADHD and another with autism. For most part of my observation, M. Burkes had been working with her students on fractions and multiple digits addition and subtraction. From 9:15 am to 10:30 am I observed Ms. Lisa Parker who is a Math co-teacher and resource teacher at Krahn Elementary for grades K-5. During my assigned time, Ms. Parker usually joined Mr. Duru’s fifth grade class of twenty three students as a co-teacher and when required would pull out a group of six students after initial instructions from Mr. Duru and would teach them the concepts separately at a slower pace. This particular group of students with special needs was mostly seen to be focusing more and more on mathematical word problems. These students were students with Learning disabilities, behavioral issues and one of them was a student with ADHD. From 10:30 am to 11:15, I was with Ms. Janice Bluhms, who is a

As a Para, I have to take a class with our ELL students so I can interpret for them in the event they cannot understand something. Although the teacher in this specific class is a great teacher, in my opinion, his communication skills are frightening the kids. Last week the students got the results of the last test and most of the kids did not do well. His speech went on for almost twenty minutes, telling the kids how upsetting it was to have such bad scores when everything is provided to them; that they needed to pay more attention to the class and do their homework, etc.…. during this time his face turned red, and his body language became stiff. He repeated himself over and over again. It was so bad; I wanted to run out of the class

Based on my classroom learning experience and the interacting within the Deaf community, I have several point to bring to attention that will elaborate my thoughts on beneficial attributes of an ASL class personally and professionally. This class actually has become one of the most challenging, yet satisfying classes I have every taken in my life. The area which is engaged the least, producing ASL, is to me the most beneficial. This area of the class is the heart-and-soul of why I fell in love with it. It’s using communication to connect with others. At first while attending ASL 1, I loved the large classroom size because it was easier to hide amongst others. I still seem to rely on this mechanism such as the Deaf events and when they

This semester in ENGL 210, I have learned about most forms of business writing as well as the various means of communication used in the business world. Along with this understanding, I have also learned how to write many different kinds of letters both formally and informally. In this class, I have written a bad news letter, a cover letter, and a thank you letter all with correct formatting, styling, and pacing. We also learned about memo format and had to write two for class. Along with memos and letters, we also wrote a resume and filmed an elevator pitch. Although I already had a resume, the one I created in class was a lot higher quality, and I now use an edited form of it to apply for summer jobs. The elevator pitch is a little to unedited

On October 26th I observed at Park Elementary in Munhall, Pa. The school is from kindergarten to 4th grade. Park Elementary was the same Elementary school I attended and the second-grade classroom I chose to observe was the same classroom that I sat in ten years ago taught by the same teacher. I chose to observe Park Elementary because the school and the teachers are who inspired me to become an elementary school teacher. The classroom was very colorful and organized. The walls were covered with decorations such as calendars, months, star student, alphabet, and number lines. The lesson I observed was a second-grade mathematics lesson and language arts. Classroom sizes are 25-30 students per classroom. The lesson was making numbers using ones, tens and

For my observation hours, I attended a first grade classroom at the Meadow View Elementary in Alabaster. My cooperating teacher's room was full of posters which she had created that featured strategies for counting, reading, and writing. She had created small reading corner, a another corner was Scholastic news, and a side of the room was dedicated to computers and iPads. My cooperating teacher had a total of nineteen students in her classroom and she had numbered all of them one through nineteen, randomly. She had arranged the student tables in small groups of four with an assigned table number to collaborative instructions and she had assigned the students according to heterogeneous groups, but during reading she had the students in homogeneous groups. My cooperating teacher had her table at the back of the room in order for her to see the entire classroom from her desk.

The activity I have planned relates to a book called Tyrannosaurus Math. The book involves the dinosaurs counting various aspects of their surroundings. For instance the mother counts her baby’s toes and fingers, as well as how many children she has. Prior to reading the book, I will have children brainstorm a list of times throughout their day in which they utilizes counting. What I am trying to do, is get the children to realize that through their day, they are always using math. When they count their money for lunch, or count the minutes til recess, they are using math. After all students have completed this, I will begin to read the book.

The entire class, both 3rd and 4th grade do a quick review, then she separates the class. While Mrs. Richards explicitly teaches new concepts to the 3rd graders, the 4th graders are completing unfinished work from the day before. Once she has explicitly taught the new concept, guided the 3rd graders through whole class practice, she introduces their independent practice, and then moves over to begin the teaching cycle with the 4th grades. As Mrs. Richards worked with the 4th grades, I was given the opportunity to assist the 3rd graders with any support they might need to successfully finish their independent math work. If any 3rd grade student finished their math work before Mrs. Richards was done with the 4th grade they move over to the computer center, where they worked with the Lexia program. This rotation between grade levels continued throughout the day, except when it came to science where both grade levels worked on the same lesson. Although Mrs. Richards’ class has a unique dynamic she still utilizes common teaching strategies such as gradually releasing responsibility on to each student, allowing the students to communicate and support each other during math, using hands on experiences during math and science, and employing the use of manipulatives to help the students understand new math concepts.

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.

The following data was gathered while fulfilling duties as a principal intern at Theresa Bunker Elementary School. The data was observed during five to seven minutes of classroom observation as part of a walk-through in the spring of the current school year. My cooperating supervisor for my internship was able to go on these walk-throughs with me in order to have a productive reflection meeting afterwards. This elementary school has two of each grade level from Kindergarten to sixth grade. Since it was more feasible in this small school setting, I actually was able to do a walkthrough in eight classes. Here I will report my observations from five of those walk-throughs. As I went in to each room I was looking for four

On 10/23/2017, Ms. Velasquez 7th period class, and the first thing I noticed was that the student had a new seating arrangement. At the beginning of class, the teacher told her students that she was not having a good day and that they had to be on their good behavior because they had to go over two topics that day. The first topic of notes was over the rate of change; they took notes on a foldable that they were going to tape in their interactive notebook. She did have to discipline at the beginning of lesson because a couple of the boys were talking when she was trying to teach. The boys seemed a little embarrassed and focused back to the lesson. The students were able to use highlighters as a technique she that value corresponds to the rate of change formula that she had on the board. After a few problems on the board the teacher lets the student finish the rest of the problem with their partners. The teacher and co-teacher walked around to make sure that the students were understanding the instructions and the lesson. Ms. Velasquez noticed that the majority of the class still need more assistance; so she went back on the board and did more examples to clarify the mistake they were making. Then transition to the new sets of notes, how to graph the rate of change given a word problem. She continued to use the highlighters as a tool to correspond to the x and y axis to the rate of change formula. Once again after a few notes the teacher let them work with their partners to finish a half sheet that had similar problems. I got to talk to some of the students on how they can relate this topic to wage when they get a job. The teacher even related to basketball, a topic the students were more related too. Then at the end of class the student had to do an exit ticket and turn it in to the teacher.

I started my lesson with math solving problem and my students easy were able to figure out what operation that needs to do. They all said subtraction. I said great. Then, I asked them to solve this problem independently. Student 1, was just sitting, Student 2 used her fingers to count, Student 3 did very fast, but not correctly and Student 4 just copied that incorrect answer. Then, I asked to share their answers. Student 3 raised her hand and said, it was easy, we have 0-9, will be 9. Then 0-5, will be 5. Then 4-2 will be 2. So, the answer is 259. From this answer I understood, that my students understand that ones must be under one, and tens under tens, hundred under hundred, but students

Wow, it has to be said that it is unbelievable that this is already the fourth week in this course. Time has gone by so quick, but so much has also been learned in this short time. Although I will sound like a broken record, I try to pride myself on not only taking a challenge and preserving through it, but also incorporating new things learned. At the time, things might seem difficult and habits hard to replace, but I have truly grown to have a new found appreciation to what this course has taught me. I might not utilize every concept in each thing that I do, but I will definitely have a different perspective on how something can be done. Week four really tied the previous weeks together and it became clearer the purpose for going through this process, I can also have a new appreciation of how this process would be beneficial in a project that is much larger and detailed. With that being said, although this project is not as in depth as I am sure something such as, a “dissertation” might be I can see the benefit of even just the simple things such as making something too wordy and also still some challenges that seem to haunt me like just the right thesis statement.