Science #3: Setback with My Goals

On Thursday, October 23^rd, I had the pleasure of going back into the preschool classroom and assisting a few classmates teach a lesson all about the sense of taste.  I was given the task of observing one specific student and taking notes about his behaviors, participation, and engagement in the lesson. 

Because of my limited engagement with the students in this lesson, it was very difficult for me to continue working on my goals.  The first goal I set for myself was to learn at least five words in Spanish.  I met this goal a few weeks ago after teaching my lesson about the sense of touch, however, I would like to continue working on this and learning more Spanish as the semester continues. 

My second goal I set was to gain confidence when working with English language learners.  Again, because I did not work a lot with the students during this lesson, it was difficult for me to gain any confidence.  In fact, if I had to say anything about my confidence I would regretfully say that I lost some confidence.  This is because there was once instance during small group work that Emily asked if I would take over her group so she could move to the computer and bring up their SMART Board activity.  Of course I said yes and I was very excited to get involved with the kids for a little bit of time.  However, as soon as I sat down and started talking to the kids, I realized that I was in over my head. 

I started talking to the kids about sweet foods and asked them if they could name anything sweet.  One little boy just stared at me and kept scooting further and further away.  I tried to make him feel comfortable but he did not speak English so he couldn’t respond to me.  This also made it difficult for me to know if he understood English.  So I just tried to use simple words and smile a lot to try and make him feel more comfortable with me.  The other little boy was also and English language learner and no matter what question I asked he responded with, “si!” even if it was an open-ended question.  I was glad that he was engaged in what I had to say and wanted to participate, but I was kicking myself for not knowing more Spanish!  I kept thinking, “if only I had taken Spanish in high school, both of these boys would get a lot more out of this lesson…”  Working with these two boys made me lose confidence in myself because I was at a loss with what to do or say.  I could make the questions simpler, but that didn’t mean that they understood.

Although I do not feel that I was successful in working towards my goals this week, I know that there are things that I can plan for my future classroom that will make it easier for me and help me work toward them in the future.  Working with ELL students requires a lot of labeling of items in both English and Spanish, or any language that’s present in your classroom.  This will help the students understand and it will give me a reference for the Spanish words when I need them.  A lot of visuals are also necessary when working with ELL students.  Pairing words with visuals helps the student gain a better understanding and internalize the information that you are presenting to them.  I hope to implement ideas like this in my future classroom.

Here is a link to a Pinterest board that is full of wonderful ideas to incorporate into a preschool ESL classroom!  A lot of the material from this board would be very helpful in building my confidence when working with ELL students.  http://www.pinterest.com/ei98srl/esl-preschool-teachers/

Exceeds:  Included link to Pinterest board with useful ideas to use with ELL preschool students.

Science: Brigham Teaching Reflection

Becca Loete and I planned a lesson using the 5E lesson-planning template to teach to a group of preschool students at Brigham Elementary School.  The week prior to us teaching, a group of ISU students did an overview lesson about the five senses.  When we taught, we narrowed it down and specifically focused on the sense of touch.  The four groups after us will be focusing on the remaining four senses; scent, taste, hear, and sight. 

There were several aspects that I thought went well throughout this lesson as well as some areas that did not and that I would change if I were to teach it again in the future.  One of the strengths of this lesson is that it was so well thought out.  We had every aspect planned out over two weeks prior to implementing it, which gave us a large amount of time to receive feedback from our instruction, reflect over potential problem areas that we could see, and memorize the different activities and information that we wanted our students to learn about.  I also thought that one of our lessons strengths was that we had the students doing a wide variety of engaging and interesting activities.  So often today, students learn either by being read to or doing worksheets.  While neither is a terrible teaching strategy when used in moderation, they are often two of the sole strategies that teachers use to teach new information.  We used a big book in our lesson and had our students interact multiple times throughout, we had them do an experiment in small groups, we led a discussion in which the students brainstormed items with different textures, they got to play a texture matching game, and they participated in a SMART board sorting activity.  We made sure to have an example of each item from the SMART board activity so that they had a hands-on opportunity to feel the textures we were asking them to know.

After teaching our lesson, I know that these were areas of strength based on a few pieces of evidence.  I know that our advanced planning benefitted us because I was not as nervous going in to teaching this lesson as I normally am when teaching at my clinical site.  This is because I had so much time to tweak the lesson plan, collect the materials, and memorize what I wanted to say.  I know that fitting in a wide variety of activities was a strength because of how engaged the students were throughout our entire lesson.  I could tell that the students were enjoying themselves because of how happy they all seemed.  I saw a lot of smiles, heard a lot of laughing during the experiment, and they students were constantly raising their hands or calling out answers.  I was glad to see how much our hard work in planning paid off.

Although I was mostly pleased with how our lesson went, I still think there were a couple areas that we can improve if we were to teach it again.  One of those is double-checking to make sure we had all of the materials.  We divided up the materials list between the two of us and there were a couple things that we thought we had but forgot to bring.  Even though this happened, it did not impact our lesson implementation.  Next time, Becca and I, or whoever I am teaching with, should make a more meaningful effort to locate our materials sooner and go shopping or change the plan if we do not have all we need.  Another item that I wish had been done differently was that we didn’t know the students prior to teaching them.  The first time we ever met the preschoolers was the day we taught them.  We could have catered more to their needs and interests if we had known them in advance.  Next time, I would hope that we could observe or help lead a lesson with the students before teaching our lesson so that we know their ability levels and could tailor more to their needs as learners. 

Like previously described, I certainly think that the students were highly interested throughout our lesson.  They seemed to really enjoy our hands on activities and constantly wanted to share ideas with us.  I think that because we incorporated some Spanish words into our lesson, it was more motivated to the native Spanish speakers in the classroom.

Because this is such a basic and general topic, I felt as though my knowledge of the content was sufficient when planning and implementing our lesson.  Becca and I made sure to explore the idea that people can use any part of their body to use the sense of touch but the most effective body part is our hands.  We explained that our hands make it easier to feel shapes and textures unlike our leg or our arm.  We also brainstormed a wide range of textures to use for this activity but narrowed it down to four that we really wanted the students to retain.  This topic might seem so simple to adults or older children, but young children need to be explicitly taught this information in order to successfully use and process information from the world around them through their sense of touch.

Throughout our lesson, it was clear which students truly understood the topic we were presenting because they were continuously giving us the correct answers to the questions we were asking.  However, it was difficult at first to know whether some of the quiet students were retaining the information.  After a while, I discovered that by posing questions to the whole group, the same two or three students will answer every time because they are not afraid of speaking in front of others.  However, when I got down on their level and asked questions to the quiet students specifically, more often then not they knew the correct answer.  Understanding the students that you are teaching and adapting your teaching to meet their needs is a very important skill to have as a teacher.

Finally, I want to address how I think I met my goals through the planning and implementation of this lesson.  My first goal was to learn at least five words in Spanish, which I definitely succeeded in doing.  I learned the phrase “Come siente?,” and the words frio, pegajoso, lleno de bultos, afilado, and suave.  It was really beneficial for me to learn these words because when I used them in the lesson, I saw certain students perk up and their eyes went back to where I was directing them.  I definitely think it benefitted some students in the classroom.  My second goal was to work on gaining confidence when working with students who speak English as a second language.  Although I do think having those Spanish words in my repertoire helped me work towards this, I definitely do not think that I have reached this goal yet.  I hope to continue working toward this goal throughout this semester and in my future teaching career. 

CHILDRENS BOOKS ABOUT TOUCH

The Sense of Touch by Elaine Landau

Sense of Touch by Mindy Matincic

Feeling Your Way: Discover Your Sense of Touch by Vicki Cobb

Hands Are For Holding by Katherine Hengel
I Touch by Helen Oxenbury

EXCEEDS: Planning: Printed out a copy of our lesson plan and gave it to the Brigham preschool teacher so she could use any of our ideas in the future if she wishes.  Reflection: Listed several children’s books that apply to our topic.