Field Experiences

I have really enjoyed my placement in Mrs. Hixson's first grade classroom at Durant Rd. Elementary School this semester. I have enjoyed all of the observations and I think that Mrs. Hixson does a wonderful job of incorporating a variety of literacy techniques into her classroom. I was very impressed about how she made accommodations for each student and focused on each child's needs. I was able to see how she does her reading groups and I have been able to gather a lot of ideas from her that I can use in my future classroom. I also liked the fact that all of her centers revolved around literacy, but she uses a variety of activities that are both fun and educational for the students. She also helped me with whatever I needed and made me feel very comfortable in the classroom. I just did the interview with her this morning and she was able to tell me a lot of great things that are happening in the classroom. Overall, I really enjoyed this placement and I learned a lot from the experience.

Planning for reading and writing instruction

Being in a kindergarten classroom right now for a placement, I have seen a lot of different thematic units that they have focused on. A huge aspect that I have seen every week I have been there has been about weather. I think it would be a lot of fun to incorporate different books about weather while studying weather because it would allow the children to expand their knowledge about weather and it would promote more literacy. I have been impressed with the different number of activities I have seen the teacher incorporate about weather and this allows the children learn that there are many different ways to learn about weather. Last week, I had to teach a physical lesson and I decided to do it about weather and teach them a thunderstorm dance. This variety allowed the children to explore how their bodies could move like weather. By reading books about weather, they would be able to talk about different things they have done in the classroom and expand their language skills as well. Some books that I might use include: What will the weather be?, Wild Weather Soup, Weather Words, and Weather Forecasting. I think that I would definitely incorporate this into a thematic unit especially since I have seen so much of that this semester and I feel that I already have some great ideas that I can use in my future classroom.