Cooperating Teacher

The cooperating teacher that I observe and help in the classroom uses many techniques to create a positive classroom environment, establish routines and offer choices to students. These techniques help the students be happy and productive in the classroom.

The teacher offers some interesting choices to her students. One of the choices is where each student chooses to sit each week. When the students come into the classroom on Monday morning they have a wide variety of seating choices. There are desks, short desks and tables that the students can choose to sit by for the week. In addition, there are chairs, cushions, balls and stools that each student can choose to use. I noticed that all of the seating options give the children a feeling of freedom, autonomy and individual choice.

Another technique that the teacher uses to support a positive learning environment is displaying the daily schedule on the board. This enables the students to see exactly what the routine will be throughout the day. I have noticed that this helps them finish tasks on time because they know when they will move on to the next activity. It also helps them work through subjects that they don't enjoy as much because they can see when the next activity will begin.

The cooperating teacher uses various rewards to encourage a positive classroom environment. She has a chart with each student’s name on a tag. The student can remove his name and move it up or down on the chart at the teacher’s request. The teacher will call out a student at any moment during the day and request that he move his name up on the chart for good behavior or down on the chart for bad behavior. Students can receive "dots" when they move up the chart and for other positive behavior throughout the day. They can trade their dots for classroom rewards such as candy or free time. I have noticed that this fourth grade class is highly motivated to earn rewards and the result has been a very positive classroom.

Learning Theories

I have enjoyed working with an experienced 4th grade teacher at Vineyard Elementary for the past three weeks. I have observed her teaching techniques and I have worked with the students in her classroom for about six hours.

Although the teacher uses a combination of learning theories, I have noticed that she uses Cognitivism the most. For example, when she introduced an assignment where the students were expected to match new vocabulary words with their meanings, she also took the time to break down each word to show the root, prefix and suffix as well as its syllables and phonics. Another example is when the students were reviewing division and she had individual students demonstrate their particular method of getting the answer. She then reviewed these methods step-by-step and had the students work out the problem again using the various methods.

I have noticed that the teacher also has the students use charts frequently. They have recently read a series of passages with a related topic and used a chart to highlight main ideas and lessons learned from the reading passages. The students also used a chart when they read a book to record details such as chapter titles and captions, as well as characters and the story plot.

I am learning a lot of useful teaching techniques from the teacher that I am working with in my service learning experience. She has demonstrated how using Cognitivism can help students retain important information by following a step of instructions, by breaking down a concept in understandable pieces and through repetition.

Service Learning

I chose to do my Service Learning experience at a wonderful school in my community. The school where I will be serving is Vineyard Elementary School in Vineyard, Utah. I have come to know many of the students and teachers at the school through various substitute teaching assignments I have had in the past three months.

Vineyard Elementary has a relatively diverse population for Utah County. It consists of 69% White students, 21% Hispanic, and 10% of other minority students. Test scores at the school fall below the state averages in English, Math and Science. My son goes to a different elementary school near Vineyard Elementary with similar demographics and worse test scores. I believe that the influx of limited English speakers is an major contributing factor to these test scores and does not accurately reflect the success that is occurring at Vineyard Elementary.

Because my teaching experience and education is in foreign language learning, I am especially excited to be involved in a service learning experience in a school that has a more diverse population and particular language learning needs. I have been away from teaching for more than 20 years and I believe that the things that I will learn in this course will help me develop improved methods in teaching. I hope that this experience will help me discover how I can use my knowledge and experience in helping meet the needs of students at Vineyard Elementary and in other schools where I may work in the future.