Today, I taught
my final lesson at Brigham Elementary School.
It was an engineering lesson that required the kindergarten students to
think critically about the shape, purpose, and use of wheels. We chose to use the standard K-2-ETS1-2:
Develop a simple sketch, drawing, or physical model to illustrate how the shape
of an object helps it function as needed to solve a given problem. For this lesson we read a book about wheels,
talked about circles, squares, and triangles as well as their attributes, let
the students explore toys with different shaped wheels, and then had the
students draw a picture of something that has wheels. Overall, I believe that our lesson was very
successful and the students took away a greater understanding of why all wheels
are round.
I made two goals for myself to work on this semester during
my time at Brigham Elementary School.
The first goal that I set was to work on learning some Spanish
vocabulary that would help me in the classroom.
I am disappointed to say that I do not feel as though I successfully
completed this goal. One example from
today’s lesson is when the students were working on their drawings, two of the
students were talking to each other in Spanish.
It was clear to me that they were commenting on each others pictures,
but I could not understand what they were saying. I feel as though I missed out on a wonderful
teaching opportunity because I was unable to interpret their conversation and
make comments that they could have related to their learning. I still hope to work on learning some Spanish
phrases that would be useful in an early childhood classroom. Some words that I think would be beneficial
include restroom, pencil, walk, criss-cross, and desk. These are words that I find myself saying
constantly at my PDS site this semester and I’m sure I will continuously be
using them throughout my teaching career.
Learning these words is just the first step in me continually working on
improving my Spanish speaking skills.
Working through this semester and the struggles that I have felt when
I’m unable to communicate with students has also made me decide to expand my
language skills even further. After I graduate in May, I plan on taking classes
either at Illinois State or Heartland Community College to learn ASL. I have learned through my ISU courses that
students truly benefit from teachers who incorporate signing into their
lessons. This will help English speaking
students, ELL students, and students with hearing impairments alike.
The second goal that I had set for myself this semester was
to gain confidence when working with ELL students. I feel as though I truly did gain an overall
boost of confidence based on all of the different experiences that I had at
Brigham. I used to be afraid of teaching
ELL students because I thought that they would look at me as if I were crazy,
and that I would be unsuccessful in conveying any new information because of
the language barrier. However, I have
learned some new strategies when teaching ELL students that helps relay
information between myself and the students.
I have also learned that many children know Basic English by the time
they reach school age. This made it
easier for me as a teacher this semester.
Although this was the case, I know that I will probably encounter some
students who do not know much English at all.
It will be my job to prepare myself adequately in order to teach them
successfully.
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