Overall, I believe that the lesson
went well. The students were engaged most of the time and seemed interested in
what we were doing. I think that the best part of the lesson was definitely
when we split the students into small groups and worked with them in a group of
three or four. Using the hands on activities for the five senses helped the
students stay focused throughout the lesson.
The goal that I wrote down was to
get more experience in a diverse classroom. This experience will definitely
help me to achieve this goal. When going to Brigham I wasn’t sure what to
expect when walking into the classroom. I knew that the class was going to be
diverse, I was just unsure of how diverse. When walking in I realized that
there were an overwhelming amount of Hispanic students. I am excited to work in
this class because it will teach me to work with students that are ELL. I have
never had the chance to work with ELL students before so I have a lot to learn
from these students. By the end of our time at Brigham I hope to gain a
plethora of knowledge from working with these students. The best way to learn something is to jump right into
it!
The classroom that I am placed in
at Prairieland Elementary is not a very diverse room, about 75% of the class is
Caucasian. Working in the classroom at Brigham keeps me in a diverse setting
and working with a different age group than my current clinical setting. My
clinical placement right now is in a 3rd grade classroom. I am
excited to be working with kindergarteners again!
Something we could have done
different in the lesson is maybe use better attention getters for the students.
Going into a new room was harder because the students did not know us and there
was somewhat of a language barrier. Next time we are in the classroom I think
that it would help if we knew the attention getter that the teacher uses or
what she says to get the students seated and ready to go. Kindergarten is a
tough age because some of the students haven’t been in a real classroom setting
before so they aren’t used to sitting for a longer than 15 minutes at a time.
In the future it is definitely important to remember that the students aren’t
able to sit still for a long time. We thought that moving to the students made
the most sense when doing the small groups but after doing the lesson I think
that maybe the students would have been less antsy if they were the ones
rotating. There are potential problems that could have happened though if the
students were moving, things could of gotten a little chaotic. I think that as a group we definitely got a
feel for the students and it will help us with our future lessons that we will
be writing for this classroom.
