Melissa's+Practicum+Blog

Melissa S's Practicum Blog

9-14-11 I visited the site to set up a regular schedule with the teacher and had a chance to look around the classroom and meet a few of the children. It was during rest time that I visited and these little kids did not want to rest. The classroom seemed like a very relaxing space where the children obviously felt comfortable. The room was very open with what appeared to be many different centers. At the front of the classroom was a big board with information and birthdays and a job list. The teacher gave me a list of the themes for every month to help me when planning activities and lessons to do with the students. I expect to be able to take what I have learned in all of my classes up to now and apply them to what the teachers and I are doing in the classroom. I expect to grow as a student and as a future teacher.



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Blog #1- What are your initial thoughts, feelings, and reactions to the classroom environment you are in? What are the children like? What are your first impressions to the class schedule, curriculum, and room arrangement? At this point I LOVE my practicum site! I am lucky to have an amazing teacher who truly loves her job and it is obvious that she is excited about it. My first day in this classroom was a great day, I instantly felt welcomed and accepted and fell right into a routine with the students and teachers. The environment and set up of the classroom adds to the welcoming feeling. At the center of the room is a large open space used for play and circle time. There are three tables around the room used for snacks and meals, as well as for centers during center time. There is a cute book corner that is out of the way of a lot of traffic making it very cozy. There is a great art center, a play center with blocks and animals, a sand table, and a house keeping center as well. There is also an area with a sink for the teachers to use. In the front of the room is a large board with the calendar, weather, job list, and the days schedule. The room is decorated primarily with the children's art work. Off of the room are two bathrooms for the children to use. This room is also connected to the kindergarten room and those children share the bathroom, at times this becomes a distraction. The children are hilarious and constantly saying and doing things to make me laugh. The schedule seems to work nicely with not too much or too little time doing any one activity. It does seem that transitions are hard times for many of the children. The teacher also puts a lot of focus on the calender, using straws to count of the days and making bundles after every 10 days. While I know this is not effective at this age, the children seem very interested in it and participate in the counting, I guess it is a good thing because they are getting counting practice out of it. Blog # 2 What are you doing to get to know the children in the classroom? What do you know about them now? What are they interested in?

I make it a goal to spend at least five minutes with each child individually while I am in the classroom. This five minutes could be spent helping them with a project in the art center or reading them a book or playing with them on the playground. This has helped the children to feel more comfortable with me and has also helped me to feel like more a part of the classroom. There is one little boy in particular who seems to have attached himself to me and I have actually spent quite a bit of time with him. He is definitely on the younger side and one of the more difficult children of the class, but he is very sweet. He is very interested in vacuums (made me think of the story you told us in class!!!) He also loves pipes and engines. During my last visit in the classroom he made an airplane out of paper and as he made it he explained it to me. This airplane consisted of a square of paper with one corner stapled in toward the middle, he LOVES staples and tape. he then drew red exit signs that told the airplane to stop, blue and orange engines, and green exit signs to tell the plane when to go. He then used tape to create "cables" that attached the airplane to the table until it was time for take off. It was amazing to watch him create this airplane because he was so serious and concentrated and that rarely happens. During circle time either I or his other teacher need to sit next to him because it helps him focus and stay on task. All of these children love to clean. Every time we go out to the play ground they get paper towels and go around cleaning the playground equipment. They also love digging for worms on the playground and watching them squirm in the dirt. I can't wait to see what these kids have in store for me next! media type="youtube" key="Gc4HGQHgeFE?rel=0" height="315" width="560" Blog # 3 Reflect on the classroom literacy environment scale. What did you notice when completing this scale. What kind of recomendations would you make to the teacher? Is literacy encouraged through the environment in the classroom? What might your classroom look like that would encourage literacy development? The classroom actually did really well on the literacy environment scale, I was pretty impressed. The classroom uses a Literacy curriculum that the teacher says she uses loosely. By this she means that rather then doing strict, scripted lessons at designated times, she attempts to incorporate them into circle time and center time and in the classroom in general. Literacy is a big part of the day. The teacher reads to the students at least twice a day as a whole group, this doesn't include the teacher reading to small groups or individuals during free choice at the child's request. As the teacher reads she often comments on vocabulary, rhyming words, letter schemes, or a connection to the monthly theme of the classroom. Students are encourage to read by learning about the parts of books, how to handle a book, and discovering that pictures correlate with the story. At this stage, a big focus is on letter recognition and sound connection. The teacher provides vocab cards for each theme with a picture on one side and word on the other. The students are very excited to write on their own right now. Often times when I am in the classroom several of the little girls are asking me to help them write stories or spell words---they are making those first critical connections. The teacher has lots of letters and words and books in the classroom and the exposure alone is a great help for this age student. The bulletin boards are filled with the student's work as well. The one recommendation I may give the teacher, is that at circle time rather then spending so much time on the calender, she could do an activity with letters or sound awareness.

Blog # 4 Reflect on your goal. How are you meeting your goal for your practicum?

My goal for my practicum was to spend time with each student to get to know them as an individual. This goal has actually proven to be quite difficult for a very interesting reason. There is a little boy in the classroom, we will call him M. for this purpose. M has grown quite attached to me and constantly wants my attention, whether it is holding his hand in line or helping him build a road out of blocks. For example the other day I was helping another child write her mom a birthday card. M. wanted me to play blocks with him and when I told him I was helping another child and that when I was finished I would be with him, he sat and waited for me to be ready. As he sat he continually asked me if I was ready yet which made it difficult to give my full attention to this other student. It seems the only time he doesn't want my full attention is when he is on the playground. I still make a huge effort to at least have a 2 or 3 minute conversation with each student.

Blog # 5

If this was your classroom, what might you change?

While I have absolutely adored being in this classroom, there are several things I would change about it. The first thing I would change would be the morning calender routine. While the teacher does her best to make it entertaining and appealing to the students using songs and counting straws, it seems to be a waste of time. Some of the older students are really into the calender. I would use this interest to create a small group activity, and allow those students to participate in a morning small group activity revolving around the calender, while the younger students participated in a different activity. The second thing I would change would be the way in which the classroom goes about resolving conflict. It seems that the teacher, most of the time, helps the students figure out how to resolve the issue on their own. The aid in the classroom, for the most part, solves the issue for the student. I think that this inconsistency confuses the students because they don't know when to go to the teacher and when to try and work it out on their own. I would create a system to help the children talk with each other and resolve issues, perhaps even role playing different situations as a big group at circle time. Lastly I would give the students meaningful jobs in the classroom. As of now, some of the jobs are meaningful, but other jobs are rarely if ever needed. All of the students want to help out and love having jobs, so why not give them meaningful ones :)

Blog #6 Final Blog- How has your own professional teaching practice changed as a result from this practicum experience? I just finished my hours and I have to say, saying good-bye was so hard. I had decided that I wanted to give each child a little card with a personal thank you message sharing a special memory and thanking them for letting me be a part of their classroom. I also gave them each a few stickers. They were so excited opening them. One asked "are you a mail lady???" In one little girls card I had said thank you for helping me around your classroom and playground to which she responded, "I never did anything!!!" The kids had all made me a card which they presented to me at circle time. Some of them had drawn pictures, some wrote little messages, and they all signed their names. When it came time to go they all gave me hugs and I almost cried...Being in the classroom with those children and that teacher just re enforced my love and passion for becoming a teaching and for helping kids...It was such a valuable learning experience. I think the biggest thing it taught me was to be patient, and be flexible because you never know how the day will go, how the kids will feel, or where they will take the lessons you are teaching them. I learned to treat each day with a clean start, forgetting about the horrible day before, or all the work needed to be done tomorrow. I learned that sometimes, just sitting back and observing the children can teach you so much, and allow you to see the bigger picture. I cannot wait to get in the classroom again!