The first grade classroom I have visited only twice, being sick last week and unable to go, so I met a substitute teacher on my first day and the regular teacher my second. Both asked students to be quiet about every four minutes and spoke loudly and often with an irritated tone to the students at large. Ms. Schwartz called a student annoying and warned the students against "making a big fat mess" of their writing projects. She just mean sometimes, I only truly heard her speak very gently when she was reading the students a story and asking them questions about it as she went.
In the first grade classroom students are asked to sit still, be quiet, raise their hands, and follow instructions. The only constructivism I saw was in students trying to spell out words correctly on their own by sounding it out or using their word board (an alphabet with what I assume are past spelling words listed under the letter they start with, it's on the wall in the back of the room) that I assume builds off of past knowledge or vocabulary. They aren't presented problems to solve on their own.
Neither is the third grade classroom, it's all instruction and I'm just set loose on both classrooms. I'm told to walk around, look over shoulders, offer help when needed, answer spelling questions, and I'm not told what not to do, how to speak, which students to push, which students to give extra help, and I feel like I'm going to do more damage than good. On tuesday this week the students were doing non-fiction books on sea turtles and apparently it was writing standard assessment and I wasn't sure how much help I could give or when to keep my mouth shut. In general they seem excited to see me, only one girl wouldn't look at me when I bent down to ehlp her with spelling. The rest are very chatty when I stop by their desks and are excited about a new face.
The third grade classroom I feel a little more at ease in because the students are more competent in helping one another and telling me what their teacher normally does when I help them. I worked with a group of four on a social studies story today and I quite enjoyed it. I even solved my first squabble and found a motivational tool. The little room we went to had one swivel chair and the rest were hard plastic desk chairs and they argued over who got to sit there, so I said we would switch chairs every time we turned a page, so they had to focus on getting through the material. We took turns reading aloud, went over vocab words, and talked about how we help our communities (the theme of the chapter). When Ms. Dahl, their teacher, announced a group would get to work out in the hall with me, the entire class raised their hands, hoping to be called on to come out. That was exciting. Still, everything is very methodical. This is how you study the vocab words, this is how you do your handwriting, this is how we share with the group, this is how we...at the very least they have art projects going on. Last week they decorated cups, and they do something new every week, that is creative though still not constructivst.
They wrote poems earlier in the day which I got to correct, and felt ill prepared to grade third grade poetry. I was to correct spelling and give suggestions, "use more describing words, use more beautiful language." I didn't know when to disapprove or be impressed, I have no idea what the average poetry skills are for this age. I felt very arbitrary when giving suggestions and comments. Ms. Dahl doesn't seem uncomfortable at all asking me to grade things which are subjective, however. I've also graded tests for her which had open ended answers and she'll give me examples of good ones and then just let me grade the tests on my own. It's good experience, and I understand she isn't my teacher. But I feel like it would be better for me and the students if someone was looking over my shoulder as I graded their tests. Oh well, I'll just do my best and ask frequent questions.
No comments:
Post a Comment