In the Classroom, Day 3

Today was my third experience in the classroom and my second experience working in the kindergarten classroom. Since, I was just in the classroom with these students last week, I wanted to make it a goal of mine to try and work with the same group of students to see how they differ from activity to activity. This week the teachers focused on recycling and identifying objects according to what product they were made out of: paper, glass, plastic, or aluminum. The teachers worked hard to provide examples through a story to help the students have an idea of different objects that are made out of those materials. During the activity, I chose to position myself where I could work with the same group of students and help them classify objects into different categories. Again, because I had no prior knowledge of the activity before going into the lesson, I didn’t have opportunity to prepare and learn some Spanish words to help translate. However, whenever a student asked what a object was, which happened quite frequently, I was able to provide a variety of examples of that product. I felt that the teachers did a great job at choosing objects that would seem familiar to the students, because while they did ask me what an object was quite frequently, they would sometimes make a guess and just look for clarification. Students that tended to struggle last week with identifying objects did better, however, I could tell most of the students tried to sneak glances at a particular student’s paper. I did my very best to stop this action from happening but I recognize that you can’t always catch every single movement. My goals play a role in today’s activity because like I said while I wasn’t able to learn any new Spanish words, I was able to think of a different way to describe an object or its uses for many students that needed it to provide differentiation. 

As I mentioned in my last blog post I continue to look forward to every opportunity I have in the classroom because it provides me with more and more experience and expose to diverse learners. I am learning to work more and more on my feet and push my thinking deeper to provide a variety of explanations to students. I look forward to my interactions with the students in the pre-K room because I know they have a student in that room who first and foremost speaks Spanish, I believe being in that classroom will push me further and provide me with opportunities to learn some Spanish vocabulary. I can take my adaptability skills that I am learning from the Brigham experience to my PDS placement classroom, since I have a few ELL students there as well. One of my students gets pulled out for ELL instruction. However, as we talked about today in class, even if a student isn’t ELL specified, ALL children need directions explained a different way from time to time. I think about how in my PDS classroom, my students are always asking me “Miss Philpott, I don’t understand what you are saying” and I have to be able to think on my feet and change my wording to provide my students with a better opportunity for learning. I look forward to more experiences at Brigham and more experiences at both Brigham and Oakland to improve my differentiation skills specifically with ELL students.

Exceeds: Over the word limit and related to my PDS placement