Fieldwork log
Field Work Experience Journal
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Class organization
The class organization is important to the dynamics of a room. If
The class is structured in a way that all the seats are in rows and facing
the board then the students are not going to be able to work together,
however if the seats are in groups of four or if four or five students are
sitting at a table they will be able to work together. Children sitting at a
group of desks or at a table together will be able to interact freely and
thus will build their social skills.
In the class that I was observing the students are sitting 4 to a table.
This sitting arranged really lets them interact with each other. It was
interesting to see just how much they would interact with each other over
school work, and how much they were able to help each other. I think this
seating arrangement is very beneficial for the student’s academic and
social development.
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Planning and Implementation of Planning
It is very important to be very thorough with each lesson. It was a unique
opportunity to plan with a teacher who has been teaching for over 20
years. She was able to guide me in the right direction, since she has
been there and done that 20 times over. I was able to plan my lessons
correctly from what I learned from the reads in class and from the
experience from the teacher.
Things don’t always go as planned. This is something that I
learned when I did the SIM lesson. I thought the students would be
able to do both tasks in twenty minutes, boy was I wrong. It took the
class over 45 minutes to just figure out how to get the piece of clay to
float. I had to rework my lesson so the students were able to do the foil
portion of the lesson the next day. As much as you plan you never know
how the students are going to react to the lesson.
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Instructional Strategies, methods and techniques
Throughout the fieldwork time I was did three types of lessons, Direct
Instruction, Information Processing Model and Social Interactive
model. The first lesson I did was Direct Instruction, this was a math
lesson on adding. It was an introduction to addition for the first graders.
They were interest at first because of the candy, but as I kept talking
and they were supposed to be listening and I was losing them, I realized
that this method isn’t the best method to use with this age group. The
second method I did was Information Processing Model. This was a
lesson on floating and sinking. They had to test objects to see if the
objects would float or sink. After they did their experiment they had to
report back to me with their findings. This method seemed to work
better with this age group. They were able to move around and they
loved the idea of being scientist. The students were all well behaved and
really responded well to this model. The last model I used with them was
the Social Interactive model. For this model I had the students in
groups of four I separated them out by ability, pairing two higher level
students with two slower learns. This lesson was again on floating and
sinking, but this time they had to make something that wouldn’t normally
float sink and something that wouldn’t normally sink float. They liked
being in groups and at this age they really don’t think of themselves as
the smart kid or the slow kid, so no one caught on to the reasoning for
the grouping. The students responded great with this lesson too. The
loved the movement and the chance to figure something out.
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Management techniques
It is important to have good management techniques when teaching
twenty, 5 year olds. It isn’t easy to control that much energy in one room.
There are a lot of different management techniques I used to help me
manage this class. One of my favorite attention grabbing techniques is a
verbal signal, I normally says “1, 2, 3 eyes on me.” A nonverbal signal I
used often was clapping in a song like pattern and having the children
repeat it.
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Assessment/Evaluation techniques
It is every important to evaluate and assess the students as often as you
can. There are three main forms assessment, formative, summative and
diagnostic. It is important for the teacher to assess their students to
have an accurate gauge of how the students are doing. In all three
lessons that I did in the classroom I made sure that I was doing plenty of
observational assessments along with worksheets that I used for
formative assessment. I liked to wrap up the lesson with a summative
assessment in the form of a quiz, so I can see individual exactly what
each student learned from the lesson. It was equally important to do
diagnostic assessment during each of the lessons.
Classroom setting
I observed in a building that has no walls or doors. The building was
built in the 1960’s when open classrooms were cutting edge. It turns out
that the building was a failed design and they have had to make a lot of
modification to it so it can be a functioning building. All of the classrooms
have a back wall and from that they have slide walls that come out about
half way. A modification that has been made is accordion dividers that
allow the teachers to pull it out to allow for my privacy when needed and
also allows then to pull them back when then want to allow for interaction
between the two classes. There are no doors; there is no fourth wall on
any of these classrooms. It is a very unique way to work. The teacher has
her desk in the front of the classroom and facing cubbies the children
have. There tables and chairs are near the blackboard. The students sit
with 4 or 5 students per desk. Since the students have tables and not
desk they use their cubbies to store their pencils, crayons, glue, scissors.
The students to have math, writing and a science and social studies
journals those are store in baskets on the shelf in the room. They do not
have a math workbook, but they do have a phonic workbook it’s stored
with their reading group teachers. There is only one really good electric
pencil sharpener in the wing of 9 classrooms. The students aren’t allowed
to use this only the teachers. Each room has one sink and a water
fountain. These come in handy when the students come back from P.E.
because they are always in need of quick drink. There are no learning
stations in the room I was in.
Procedures
The procedures that are in this classroom are a little chaotic at
best. The students in this class are not assigned a job, so there are no
paper monitors to pass out the papers. The papers and materials are
normally always passed out by either the teacher or the teaching
assistant. I have noticed that this typically just wastes time. When it
comes to the bathroom procedures, the teacher has a system that could
be better. She has a girl and boy pass that whenever they have to go to
the bathroom they turn this little sign over. Only one girl and one boy are
allowed out of the room to use the bathroom at a time. The system that I
have seen work better is the teacher puts all their names on cloths pins
and when they are have to go to the bathroom they just move the cloths
pin from IN to OUT. This way the teacher knows who exactly is out of
the room at any given time. In the room I was in the teacher guesses at
times who is out of the room. The students go to their specials at the
same time everyday, once a day. The special they go to are, P.E, twice a
week, Library/Computers, Art, and Music. The classroom teacher has
to walk the students to their special and then pick them up at the end.
The school is required by law to do ten fire drills a year. The students
are told when they hear the bell to leave everything where is it and go to
the back door (every classroom has a backdoor that is only allowed to be
used for fire drills). The students line up and the teacher takes a roster
and leads the students to a safe spot. Once they have researched that
location the teacher will call out all of their names to make sure that
everyone is accounted for.
Ability Levels of Students
This class is a good mix of students who range in ability level.
There are two bottom kids who are still trying to figure out their
numbers and letters. There are a good amount of students that are
right on target for this point in first grade. There are 6 students that are
exceptional bright. The teacher will have the either herself or the
teaching assistant sit with the two slow learners to help them on anything
the class is doing. For the bright students the teacher will have an
enriching activity for them to do, because they are typically done with
their work before the rest of the class.
Most used Models of Instruction
There are a lot of different models that are use in this class. The
teacher hates doing the same thing twice, so she is consistently changes
how she teaches and what she teaches. She likes to have the students
sitting on the carpet in front of the blackboard when she is explaining
either what they are doing, or how to do something. She feels that they
will focus better if they are sitting on the carpet instead of at their seats.
The teacher is animated and demands the students sit and listen to her,
which because of her animation usually is not a problem. If a student is
not paying attention and the teacher has warn the student a few times
the student will be told to sit in their seat with their head down. First
graders are a talkative bunch, you would never think they have so much
to say but they will talk for hours if you let them. Giving the student time
to socialize is important, but they have to learn when it is time to talk and
when it is time to listen. When ever a student is done with their work the
teacher will have them either complete what they didn’t finish or they will
be told to read a book at their seat.
Structure of the lesson
When I taught my lessons I took a cue from the teacher in how she
structured the class’s lessons. When I was getting ready to teach I would
call the students to the carpet. I told them they have to come to the carpet
because I need scientist and they were just who I needed, so come quickly.
Once all the students sat on the carpet I began my lesson with my AS
part of my lesson plan. I would give very thorough explanations to what I
was teaching them. I would try and explain it more then one way, so I would
hopefully research everyone in the class. For both of the science lessons
I told them that they needed to go to their tables that I have already
predetermined, and begin the science experiment. Once the students
were in their places I walked around the room making sure the students
were on the right track and using the worksheets I provided for them.
Once they were done with the experiment I would call them back to the
carpet so we could wrap it up with either me explaining what happened or
with one of the students explaining their findings. The students were so
busy doing the science experiment that there were no behavior problems.
Every child was so focused on the task at hand they were great. It is
amazing that when the students see the teacher, me or the teacher, get
truly excited they jump right on board and they are even more excited
then we are. With both experiments the all the materials and supplies were
laid out for them.
Cooperative Learning Instruction
This lesson was a lot of fun but it also was an eye opener for me.
This lesson is a lot like the one from above. There were only a few
differences. The first difference is they were in groups that I selected for
them based on intelligences. The students are always so used to working
with whom ever that this did not faze them one bit. The students were free
to move around. Most of them were standing around their table with their
pan of water. It was interesting to see the roles and how they played out.
Out of the four the recorder was one of the bright kids who could write.
The material manager was a slower learner because I felt this child would
feel successful in that role. The task manager was which ever child in the
group I felt was the most mature. I wanted to make sure that they really
would make everyone else stay on task. The time keeper was someone in
each group that I felt would have some grasp of time telling. The group
was expected to act like a team, and they did as much as they could for
being first graders. My role was just to walk around and ensure everyone
was staying on task with the assignment and with their role in the group. I
also provide them with worksheets to help them remain focused. My
biggest surprise is how I miss managed time I thought they would be able
to do both the part of this project in 20 minutes, well 45 minutes later and
still trying to figure out the first part I realized that the second part was
going to have to be push to the next day.