End of Semester wrap up!

I learned so much in this semester’s field experience. I learned a lot from the teacher and a lot from the students and their interest as fourth graders. My teacher did a great job getting me involved with the classroom. During reading groups I worked with the mid leveled readers. It was great to see how their skills improved over the two months that I was there and as they got into more author studies it was nice to see them really get involved with the story. My teacher allowed me to grade a lot of the student’s work which allowed me to see just what the students were getting wrong on tests and how they were set up. In the beginning a lot of students did poorly on their unit tests, but my last day they took one and it was awesome to see the kids work so hard. Many of them came up to me and showed me how much they wrote on the open ended questions and were excited to tell me what they wrote about for the story question. Most of the kids used the entire time to take the test and check it over before turning it in. You could tell that when they turned it in they were confident and proud of the work they had done on it. I was not able to see what grades they got, but I am sure that most of them did very well on this exam! I think that a student being proud and confident in their work is half the battle for teachers. We all know that they can do it, but it’s getting them to take pride and really working their hardest. I think that this classroom of fourth graders is on the right track to accomplishing a lot of great things. I learned a lot about lesson planning and organizing the week from my teacher. You must be flexible and organized enough that you can change something in the schedule just like that because you never know if the students are going to need more time on something or if they become really interested in something and want to take more time on a subject. If you put in the right amount of time before or after school it will make your day go so much smoother. It does not have to be a ton of time, just a little to sit down and get things organized for the day. I really enjoyed this semester and my teacher and the class. On the last day I gave the kids a chapter book to read for Christmas and they were so excited about reading it. My hope is that they all take the time to read and discuss with their classmates what is going on in this book. I think that discussion can build more classroom connections and confidence in the classroom. I am looking forward to seeing how this class does in the semester after Christmas break! I will be sure to take a day and stop in to see them!