For my field experience I want into Mrs. Henderson’s 4th grade classroom. When I first found out that I was going to be in 4th grade for field, I was disappointed because I had wanted to get an older grade, like 5th or 6th. I ended up loving 4th grade. The students were awesome and really fun to be with. The first week there was spent helping the teacher with tasks she needed done, observation, and helping individual students. Learning all of the student’s names was easier than I thought it was going to be. It was great being in a classroom and being able to see all the things we were learning applied with real students. There were a lot of things that Mrs. Henderson did that I really liked. I felt that she had excellent control over the class, and the students knew that she was in charge, but they still had fun as a class and with the teacher.
I loved how Mrs. Henderson taught. Each lesson was a little bit different, but she would ask the students and direct their thinking to the correct conclusion. For example, when teaching about the water cycle, she would ask questions that made them think about why it would do that. She would ask why it rained, to have the students think about what made it rain scientifically. She would ask what they thought, and let the students answer until someone hit it, and then run with that idea. She would never tell them their ideas were wrong, if they were a little bit off, but just say, “Ok. What else do you guys think?” I felt that this allowed the students to think about the process and come to their own conclusion.
Each day was structured almost the same, with minor variations depending on subject. In the mornings the students would do reading. There were reading groups, and each group would take turns going to the reading table to read with Mrs. Henderson. The other students would finish reading assignments, work on spelling or on other assignments if they had extra time, or read. After reading was math. While I was there the students were working on fractions. They started off doing basic fractions like figuring out what number was the denominator and which was the numerator, how to write them, etc., and then moved up to adding and subtracting fractions, and also to mixed numbers. After math was lunch and recess. After lunch, they had social studies. When we first got there they were finishing up a unit on mountain men in Utah’s History. The rest of the day was a little more flexible. They would usually have a science rotation, and then have recess after that. Then they might do spelling, art, computers, PE, or read aloud.
The lesson’s we taught were social studies, so the last week we were in charge of the content. The teacher wanted us to focus on Standard 1 in the core. We could pick anything we wanted to teach within that standard. We taught lessons on longitude/latitude, archeology, erosion, and a tour of Utah showing different recreational spots in Utah. I felt that we got a good response from the students on each of our lessons. My favorites were longitude/latitude and the tour of Utah. For the longitude/latitude we taught them what it was and how to find it on maps, and then let the students create their own map. They loved it, and we got some really creative maps. The tour involved a power point that allowed the students “to travel” to 6 different locations around Utah. The title page had the name and picture of each destination and they could pick which one they wanted to go to. They had little “passports” that they would take notes in after they had “traveled” to each destination. The students loved it! They would ask what we were going to do for social studies that day, and if we could go to more locations.
There were some funny/interesting experiences while I was there. There was one girl in the class who had A.D.D. You could tell she came from a family background that was not ideal. She reeked of smoke every day, and you didn’t shower often. She was a very happy girl who always had a smile on face. One day she came up to me and said, “Miss Sands guess what I saw when I was walking to school today? There was a rat and it was dying in the gutter, so the only thing I could do was humanely kill it.” I really didn’t know how to respond to that. I really wonder what she had seen at home to have learned about that. There was another day she came up to me, and she looked a little different but I couldn’t put my finger on what was different. Then she told me the story of how her sister had shaved her eyebrows off while she was sleeping. Her grandma had tried to draw them on with a pencil, but it was really obvious they were gone. I felt so bad for her! On our last day in the class, the students wanted to surprise us by jumping out and yelling “We’ll miss you!” when we walked into the classroom. The students were hiding in different spots around the classroom and they all jumped out. One boy hid in the broom closet they had in the class, and he got locked in. It was pretty funny.
I loved being able to go into Mrs. Henderson’s class and get to know these students. It was nice to see what we were learning in class being applied in a classroom. In class everything we learn is hypothetical and it’s a lot easier to hypothetically solve a problem, but this allowed us the opportunity to use this in real life situations. I liked being able to watch the teacher and see how she interacted, taught, and disciplined her students. I loved this experience, and wish it could have been longer. Leaving was a lot harder than I thought it would be.
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