children center observation

While I was at the children center for an hour I was able to observe the pre-preschoolers play inside and outside. I observed a few students playing with Lego's. While the students played with Lego's they usually made people and had them do something. One boy and girl made a race car track and had their Lego men race on it. While they were making their track they discussed what they were going to do. Their discussion helped their language without them even realizing it. I also witnessed one girl playing with games on the computer. One game in particular had a song and had the words on the screen. The young girl got out of her seat and sang along with the song and danced. She was very enthusiastic! The boys playing in the block area built the large blocks around their body and then escaped by pushing the blocks out of the way. They took turns making the wall around their bodies. One boy would make the wall while the other stood in the center of the wall. While I was outside I witnessed the children taking turns going down the slide. Many of the boys played catch with the football while the girls and some boys ran around playing tag. The students were very energetic while they were outside and it was clear they were having fun. Although it was some boys just playing with the football the boys and girls were both intertwined with their play.

kindergarten observation

While I was at Aldo in the kindergarten class I worked with male and female students at a station. Most of the students were Caucasian but two were African American and one was Native American. The station I was at, the students were able to relate to a book with a map in it and then make one of their own. They students often made a compass on their map and made the route from their house to the school. Many students were able to tell me which direction their map was going, either north, west, east, or south. One student that I particularly worked with made a map of the route from St. Norberts to Aldo Elementary. I was able to tell them which direction to go and he drew it on his piece of paper. He rarely had to look back on the other map to see the compass.

second grade observation

My second grade observation at Aldo was with a second grade class, consisting of males and females of a Caucasian race. While I was there the teacher had me take some students out into the hallway individually to read a book. The first student that came with me was very intelligent. She was reading a book that was aimed for a third grade level. Before we started reading the book she was able to tell me exactly what had happened in the beginning. After we read for some time together and stopped she was again able to tell me exactly what we read. It was easy to tell that this young girl was an advanced reader. The other two students that came to read with me were reading at a lower level. One of the boys even mentioned to me that he did not like to read, he only enjoyed playing video games at home. This goes to show how play has changed over time. While I was reading with the two boys that were at a lower reading level it was easy to tell they did not receive as much practice reading as the young girl had. They had a hard time pronouncing many words and it was difficult for them to tell me what they read. By experiencing this I was able to realize how differentiation is a must in the classroom because of the different reading levels.

Picocrickets

My group and I made a ballerina dancer picocricket. There was a sensor light attached to the dancer and the dancer spun in a circle. To make the ballerina have a light and spin became quite difficult. It was frusterating to try to make the program work on the computer. At times it would work and others it would not, but figuring out the problem was difficult because we did not know what we were doing wrong. Luckily while showing it to the class it worked. I think this would be a great tool to use in the classroom but in order to use it I would need a lot more instruction. I was not familiar with the tool so making it work was hard for me. I do not think I would want to use this in a lower level (kindergarten and first grade) unless I had other people helping me because I know I would need a lot of help to guide all of my students with it. Although it may be difficult to instruct something like this I think it would be very beneficial and fun to use in the classroom, I would just need to become more familiar with it.