Current Event

One of the greatest demands teachers in classrooms face is dealing with students who have disabilities and English language learners. This challenge of working with these students who may be struggling can be overwhelming depending on the severity. However there are several ways that schools are helping teachers with the students who need more assistance in the classroom, with ELL programs and programs to help students with disabilities. In the class I aid in, there are a few children who have disabilities are there are also a few who are in the ELL program. These children leave the regular classroom at certain times each day to go be in groups and work on things and get things explained a little more. This is a time that both helps the children be able to understand more and for the teachers have a little help with their students. These children may be more demanding in the classroom and having this time to go talk to other teachers one on one can be extremely helpful to them and beneficial to the teachers. These programs are extremely important I think because the students come first and always should the priority to the teachers.

High Order Questions

The past couple weeks the elementary school I aide at have been doing state testing. Teachers and aides are not allowed to "help" the students on the tests, however we can read the questions to them and ask them questions to get their minds on the right track. It is important to be careful in what you say though because you are not technically supposed to be helping, just guiding them in the right direction or reminding them that they know how to do it and they must be nervous. High order questions are important to ask students when they are struggling but they really know the answers or how to do the problems. If a student is struggling you could ask them what do you need to do next (not telling them what to do but reminding them to think about it in a different way maybe). Reminding students of practice tests to think back to help them in the current test is also very useful. High order questions are important because they allow guide the student in the right direction while allowing them to do it all by themselves. The teacher and student teacher in my third grade class are very careful about the questions they use and that is important so as not to directly help the child when they are supposed to the work themselves. Overall, asking high order questions can be very key to students success.

Lesson Clarity

There are many different ways to clarify a lesson in the classroom. I have observed a few of these lesson clarifications in my third grade class. I am in the class mostly for math and a little bit of reading time. During math, the kids do math stations in groups of about four around the room. Every time the teacher introduces a new station, the class first goes through it as a class so they get the hang of it and can ask any questions they may have. I think this is a great way to make sure the lesson of that math station is clear for the students. They have a chance to play it and understand it as a group so that when it comes time to do in stations they already know how to play it and won't have to learn a new game at each station. When I first came into this class I did not know about this process so I did not completely understand what was going on, however the students knew exactly what to do without needing the teacher to tell them.
Also, when the class is transitioning and some kids are not doing what they have been told, instead of the teacher just telling a single student several students, he will just say something like, "Oh I really like how Suzy got up, pushed her chair in and walked quietly." This way of reminding the students what they are supposed to be doing and praising a student rather than just reprimanding a student seems very affective.
Another way the teacher clarified a lesson for the students was when the kids were trying to match a 2D image of blocks with the real blocks in front of them. This was very difficult for several students to get the hang of but walking around the classroom and talking about it helps them a lot. Also the teacher put the blocks up on screen to show the whole class what it actually looks like so they could really see it in case they had not gotten the answer themselves.
The teacher I observe does a great job of explaining things verbally and visually for his class and the class usually seems to know what is going on very well.

week 3: classroom management

Over the past three weeks I have aided a third grade classroom in about six times. All of these times have been great experiences as the kids and I start to get to know each other. I have observed several of my teachers methods he uses to get and keep their attention, keep a positive atmosphere in the classroom and everything else. I really admire my teacher because he is very good with the kids in his class, he knows how to manage eighteen kids at once. There is a child with turrets and child with ADD in this class but my teacher is great in being to work with them and not "baby" them. One way he keeps the class positive and calming, is that he dims the lights and turns on calming but quite music when they have silent reading time. This really seems to keep the kids calm, and they are allowed to sit wherever they want in the classroom at this time, some lay down with bean bags in the back of the classroom and read or some prefer to just sit at their desks. But during this time all the kids stay focused really well, they read for about twenty or thirty minutes and do very well with it. I really think the music and atmosphere allows the kids to really enjoy that reading time. I have also seen how my teacher encourages positive attitudes and good behavior in the class. When the kids do well on something or are behaving better than others they receive a "husky ticket" and my teacher may say something like, "Look how well [suzy] is following instructions." The techniques my supervising teacher use are very effective in his classroom and He really knows how to manage his classroom.

Teachers Philosophy

The teacher I am aiding for has teaching philosophy that I really like and agree with. His philosophy geared toward hands on learning, thinking like a third grader, and his classroom being a positive class rather than negative. He likes to do interactive learning games rather than just worksheets because it gets the children more involved and excited about what they are studying. Also to make the environment calm, he plays soft music and dims the lights when the kids are transitioning or reading. My supervising teacher also believes in being consistent, organized and planned.

Hello, I am going to be aiding in a local elementary school for one of my college classes. I am anxious to learn more about becoming a teacher and the processes in the classroom.