Weekly Reflection - Technology Interview

* I had written this blog, but i didn't finish it so i just saved it instead of posting, so here is my technology interview blog.

Doing the technology interview was so enlightening to me. The teacher we were with wasn't really into technology and he didn't know the resources that his school had. When we talked with the media center specialist we found out that the school didn't really have very much access to technology. This made me so sad because i really want to integrate technology and some schools just don't have access. I know that i can apply for grants, but the decision of where i want to work will definitely be affected by the technology that i have access to.

Week 3 Reflection

Field has been such and awesome experience and i have definitely learned a ton!! This week we taught only 1 lesson and it went fairly well, but we had a little too much content for the amount of time we actually had, so that is something i have to keep in mind, always making sure that the amount of content is appropriate for the time and for the students. I have had so much fun that i don't even want to come back to classes, i would just love to stay and help out in 4th grade for the rest of the semester. One problem that i had this week was when i was correcting the math homework, none of the studetns were focusing and they were asking all of the questions. They were frustrated and i was a little bit frustrated that it had taken us so long to do something so simple. 2 of the boys came up to me trying to figure out their score and i just told them to go back to their seat and i would look at their papers while i was recording the scores. On the way back to their desks though one of the boys socked the other in the stoumach because he thought he had graded his paper wrong. I felt really bad because i probably could have taken care of the problem before i sent them back to their desks, maybe if i had had more of an idea of the relationship of these boys i would have helped them work it our instead of sending them straight back to their desk. Maybe they would have still gotten in a fight no matter what i did. It was just helpful for me to deal with this situation and to help these boys work out their problem - at least for now.

Well all in all i really, really enjoyed my time in 4th grade. I probably wouldn't ever choose to teach 4th grade if i were given the choice, but i did love working with the students and i had a really great time. :)

Week 2 Reflection

I had a really great time this week. I had so much fun getting to know all of the students a little better and we also taught 2 lessons that went really well. In our second lesson I was really worried because the students seemed so loud and chaotic, but when our field supervisor talked to us she said it was great because the students were so engaged. This is something i will always remember, that sometimes it is good to have a loud classroom. I'm really kind of sad though because this is going to be our last week. :(

Week 1 Reflection

What a week! I have learned so much and have had so much fun with all of the students. Going and doing this really reminds me about why I want to be a teacher. Working with the students has really opened my eyes up to the dynamics of a classroom. We sit and learn all of these strategies in our classes, but they don't mean a thing if we don't try them out in the classroom. So some of the things we tried: Teaching a concept development lesson, We have only done this type of lesson in our class with all adults and it went wonderfully, but with the 4th graders who had never done a lesson like that before, they really weren't able to do it correctly and it took them a lot longer than we had planned. I noticed that time thing a couple of other times. Everything takes so much longer than you are counting on, so i guess we just need to plan for things taking a lot longer than expected and also not be too disappointed when lessons don't work out or when things don't go the way we planned-- there will always be another opportunity to try again.

We were also able to teach another lesson about the pioneers during math time, so we had the students walk 1/4 mile and then figure out how many steps in a mile and how many steps in the journey & then graph it. This was our first lesson and gave me a little insight into keeping the class engaged. They would get excited and begin talking and getting their attention was very difficult for me because i'm just such a quiet person. Discipline and Attention are definitely things that i am working on and will probably be working on for a long, long time. All in all it was a really great week and i'm excited to go back for another week. :)

Reflection

This week i finished up my website with the 6 pages that we had to do for class. They were really easy to do and it was fun to learn all the types of pages so that we know all that we can do with the google sites. I'm excited for when i have my own class and i can have a class website. I also think that it would be so great for students to be able to create their own websites and now that i know how to do google sites i could teach it to my students (though they probably wouldn't need much help if they were in the sixth grade).

Right now i'm just really nervous for feild so hopefully after going my nerves will all calm down and we will have a lot of fun. One thing that i'm excited for is in one of our lessons we will be showing our digital story so all of the work we did definitely paid off.