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)
Julia,
ReplyDeleteMuch like you I was very excited to get to work with the preschool students at Brigham. I think this might be the age group that I enjoy working with the most. I could not wait to get in the room and be able to interact with the students. I wasn't only sad when our lesson was shorter than planned because I felt like we let the teacher down I was also sad because it shortened our time with the students. I agree that it was so short because we did not plan any type of work for the students or any transitions. Looking back I think we should have openly discussed each of the five senses and allowed the students to come up with something that they have tasted, smelled, touched, saw, or heard. This would have allowed each student to come up with a personal connection to our lesson which, would have made it more meaningful. This is something we should have taken into consideration before hand. It is always a good thing when the students can make personal connections to what they are learning. However, on a another note the students were much more talkative than I thought they were going to be. Of course, they were a little bit shy but it seemed like they enjoyed going on our hypothetical picnic and every one of them gave an example of a food they would like to bring! Most of there food choices were even healthy foods which I was pleasantly surprised by.
Julia,
ReplyDeleteI agree with that it is exciting to be working with these preschool students. Any experience we get in the classroom with students is always beneficial. I think we all had similar goals that have to do with working with English language learners. I think that time management is one of the biggest things that we need to work on. I do not think any of us anticipated how short it would take us to complete all of our activities. I think that a lot of it had to with transitions, like you said. The whole time we were there we just had them at the carpet. Next time we should definitely have them move around, whether it is to their tables, around the room, or moving around on the carpet. While reading the book, it would have been beneficial for the students if we stopped and talked about it and it would have given us more time in the classroom. We will be sure to get the book ahead of time before going into the classroom in the next few weeks that we are in there. I think that one reason that we were not as enthusiastic as we should have been is because we did not want to scare the students. I agree with you when you say that they were all so little! I think that we all just did not want to feel intimidating to them. But I think that as we get more comfortable with each other it will be easier.
Julia,
ReplyDeleteI like how you mentioned the classroom preschool environment you were placed in. The kindergarten class I taught my lesson in also had words posted around the room in both English and Spanish. I love that visuals corresponded to the words, as well. Especially at such a young age, illustrations are key for children to understand. I think that the classroom environment did a wonderful job supporting all children’s language development. It seems like you learned a lot during your first lesson, not only about the kids but about the aspects of your lesson you want to improve upon. Reflection is key! Although we may not like it, we all make mistakes and need to learn from that in order to improve for the future. We are beyond lucky to have so many experiences inside the classroom. So even if we feel that we bombed a lesson or knew things could have gone better, at least we tried our best. Life is nothing but one giant learning experience. Sometimes we take a few steps back in order to make leaps and bounds into our future. These are just the stepping stones that are preparing us for something bigger, our careers as being educators. I was very happy to hear that you look forward to bettering your lesson and time management practices (we all could use that)! I think you and your group will do a wonderful job teaching all students in your preschool setting. Best of luck to you all!