Victoria's Reflection: My Observation At Centennial Elementary School

The first week of class we were assigned to read few pages from the book titled, “To teach the journey of a teacher” written by William Ayers. After reading the pages at home, we came to class where we were told to do group discussion and share our thoughts about the reading, whether we agree or disagree. As we all know everyone has their own perspective of looking at things in different ways. Similarly, when I started the group discussion amongst four people, we each individually shared our thoughts about the reading. There came a point where the group members agreed and disagreed with each other. For example, when we were talking about myths, in the beginning I agreed with myth 7, which states, “Good teachers treats all students alike”.

Do you ever find yourself wondering how you can form a better connection with your students? You are not alone. In her book, Bad Guys Don’t Have Birthdays, Vivian Paley looks for ways to improve her teaching methods and connect with the children in her class. After coming in contact with a school director that was a fan of promoting abstract thinking, Paley noticed that she was neglecting to take her students’ ideas into consideration and in many instances, focusing more on what she knew to be the answer rather than how her class solved the problem. To change her teaching style, Paley thought it would be better to immerse herself in the many different perspectives of her preschool class rather than presuming that she understands

In the Prologue of Black Ants and Buddhist, the teacher is always engaging her students with real-world situations and meaningful conversations where the students all seem to be comfortable voicing their own opinion. With the discussion led in her classroom children could hear from other perspectives, which I believe will make the students more empathic and understanding to others beliefs and opinions. With the ant situation the children were able to come to an agreement and also a way to prevent ants from invading the classroom again. I loved how this situation was handled and how the children led most of the conversation with such maturity! I hope one day I will be able to manage my classroom with such

With a small group, discuss the following questions. Choose someone to read the question out loud, and direct the discussion so that each person can offer his/her opinion on the topic. Have another student record the group’s response and choose a third student to report the information gathered to the class in a discussion.

I think this book gives us the opportunity to reflect on our roles in our students’ lives, as a general classroom teacher and how we can best help our students develop into active learners and well-adjusted adults. Paley also made us think about how children’s story and classroom community play a significant role in helping children learn about themselves and

Using an interest inventory to discover what students in the classroom find most interesting can be extremely beneficial to the teacher. If the writing promotes interests, it is likely that the students will be much more encouraged to put forth effort and skill. It is important, however, that teachers limit the topic selection. Giving students a set of ideas will allow students to not be overwhelmed by topics but also allow them to select a topic that may be more interesting to them than others.

taking thoughts from it. In this class, we have read many stories that have focused on

Asch, Solomon E. "Opinions and Social Pressure." Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. 9th ed. Eds. Laurence Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen. New York: Pearson Longman, 2005. 306-312.

In this essay, I demonstrated Student Learning Outcome #6 by going into a conversation based on what they say and including my thoughts on what I say, yet recognizing the distinctions among opinions, facts, and inferences. This essay that I am using is about ghosts with my thoughts and opinions about it based off a journal.

This movie, The Classroom, which was very interesting to watch, discusses all that goes on in the school system, the good and the bad. But it also shows how things at home can affect the way the student acts during the school day. This movie definitely makes you look at students that act out differently, instead of punishing them maybe we should all look deeper into the issue and find a way for the student to thrive and use school as an outlet.

Although it is seen that everyone has similar opinions from time to time, not everyone’s opinions correlate. I was able to see this during the discussion of the Weekly News Analysis’. Different students in my class were able to dissect the same article but in different ways. I realized that everyone has lived through different life experiences and have diverse opinions and points of views on various topics. It was amazing for me to realize that if everyone helped one another, we could learn a lot due to the different perspectives and mindsets.

Tucker, [364 U.S. 479,] at 487. The classroom is peculiarly the 'marketplace of ideas.' The Nation's future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure to that robust exchange of ideas which discovers truth 'out of a multitude of tongues, [rather] than through any kind of authoritative selection (Keyishian v. Board of Regents).'" This means that the students have a right to continue to see each other’s work as is the practice so that natural discussions can evolve which allow them to see others viewpoints. At younger ages it would be important to point out that the student’s work was their own possibly by having everyone present their works so the children associate the religious idea with a person and not the school. At older ages students are aware that the work belongs to the individual and no discussion

classroom discussion. After years of reading my story, viewing it on video, and hearing others

At Centennial Elementary school Mrs. Madrigal was giving a composition lesson that focused on summarizing. During academics on Tuesday, March 15th, 2016 at 5 o’clock the lesson on summarizing was given to first graders. The lesson was introduced by the teacher in a fun and exciting way. The teacher asked who has played football or if the students have a favorite team. Some students mentioned the teams their parents liked and others didn’t know anything about football. Then, the teacher handed out a worksheet that had the word “Football” in bold and larger text in the top middle section of the page. The top half of the worksheet had two sections, to its left it had a paragraph that consisted of nine sentences and to the right, a picture of a football player about to throw the football and someone covering him and another person from the opposite team trying to stop him. As the teacher read the short paragraph, the students read along with her. There were seven students during the lesson and they all seem to enjoy reading about football. After reading the paragraph some students wanted to discuss football teams, but the teacher mentioned that they are going to get a chance to express their preferences about their favorite team later and to focus on only the short story about football. The bottom half section had two questions. One asked to write in complete sentences what was the story

Furthermore, promoting the expression of ideas in a free, non judgmental way in the classroom is of great importance. The way teachers can understand the student’s point of view on various topics and may be the outcome of this can be greater appreciation and understanding.