Today we went in to meet
the preschool class at Brigham, which was a very exciting experience since I love
any chance to work with preschool students! Before entering the classroom I had made some goals to help guide my experience. My goals include simply meeting and talking with students who are English Language Learners in order to gain insight on what it would be like to teach them. I also hoped to observe signs of struggle or discomfort when students were listening or speaking English and to take note of this. I was able to get a quick glimpse at this today as I worked with the very diverse classroom we have! Our preschool class turned out to all speak English, therefore I believe the students' hesitations during the lesson had to do with shyness. As I continue to work with these students I will be able to work on my goals of gaining experience with a diverse group of students
There is much to reflect upon based off of the short time we were able to have with them. Obviously the first thing that comes to mind is what could have been improved upon, being our time management. Planning for this experience, we were expected to engage the students in a get to know you activity and introduce to five senses. We planned it out and discussed with our instructor, however we were unprepared for how quickly all three of the activities would go. I believe this is because all of our activities were verbal and did not require any sort of a transition or for the students to work on something individually. This is something we could have reflected on prior to entering the classroom, however now we know this was one of those classroom situations where we needed an extension activity. Another thing that could have gone differently (and added to the time) would be pausing during the read aloud and prompting students with questions and prompting them to give examples from their own lives. In the future we would have made sure to receive the text ahead of time in order to do a read through and pre-plan where the reader would stop and prompt students with questions and making connections! I also believe that we could have worked on our enthusiasm level, which is always a little difficult the first time walking into a new classroom and feeling as though we are towering over these tiny people! I think next time if we were to show more excitement, the students would come out of their shells a little more quickly and the educational conversations will follow!
There is much to reflect upon based off of the short time we were able to have with them. Obviously the first thing that comes to mind is what could have been improved upon, being our time management. Planning for this experience, we were expected to engage the students in a get to know you activity and introduce to five senses. We planned it out and discussed with our instructor, however we were unprepared for how quickly all three of the activities would go. I believe this is because all of our activities were verbal and did not require any sort of a transition or for the students to work on something individually. This is something we could have reflected on prior to entering the classroom, however now we know this was one of those classroom situations where we needed an extension activity. Another thing that could have gone differently (and added to the time) would be pausing during the read aloud and prompting students with questions and prompting them to give examples from their own lives. In the future we would have made sure to receive the text ahead of time in order to do a read through and pre-plan where the reader would stop and prompt students with questions and making connections! I also believe that we could have worked on our enthusiasm level, which is always a little difficult the first time walking into a new classroom and feeling as though we are towering over these tiny people! I think next time if we were to show more excitement, the students would come out of their shells a little more quickly and the educational conversations will follow!
In regards to the overall class, there are things I was
able to notice about the students and the environment they are in. I loved
seeing the mixture of Spanish and English! They have Spanish words posted next
to any English labels throughout the room, which I believe benefits all
learners! I learned that all of the preschool students do speak English however
knowing that some of their home languages are being celebrated and utilized in
the classroom is a very positive aspect of this particular class! While
this classroom was small it was very diverse with what appeared to be
Caucasian, Hispanic, and African American students which is very exciting! The students appeared to be shy and quiet at
first, but each student was able to contribute, whether it was with a quiet
voice or a nice and loud one! An example of something else I took note of about
the class during our lesson was when conducting our get to know you activity; I
was pleasantly surprised to see that almost all of the students choose to bring
along either fruits or vegetables on our hypothetical picnic! It appeared that
they were aware of what a healthy diet consists of and may have had positive
experiences with fruits or vegetables in the past!
Exceeds:
I thought of a couple of
extension activities we could have done to further the learning of our
preschool students. One activity we could have done with the children
was to play a game of eye spy to model the sense of sight. We could take turns guessing
what each student sees. We could also go
around the circle and describe our favorite smells! The teacher would model
saying what her favorite smell is and we would popcorn around the circle
sharing different smells. We could have
broken into small groups and play a game of memory; where each group got a
stack of cards with pictures depicting either a smell, taste, touch, sight, or
sound. They would take turns matching them up and saying which sense it was!
(Went over word count for exceeds as well)
(Went over word count for exceeds as well)
