Course Topics and Service Learning

I am learning a lot in this class and I am able to see how it relates to real-life experiences in the classroom by participating in Service Learning. For instance, I saw a cooperating teacher coordinating with a student teacher about the social studies standards that they would be teaching. That taught me how important Standards are and how they are implemented in the classroom.

Blogging has encouraged me to consider how I could implement what I am learning in my Service Learning experience. It has helped me make connections to important concepts such as classroom environment and teacher-student interactions that I may not have remembered if I had not recorded them.

When I wrote my first blog I hadn't spent any time with the cooperating teacher in the classroom. I didn't know what to expect with the experience. I was very rusty working with kids in the classroom and was hoping that I would learn a lot that would help me when I went back to teaching. The experience was invaluable. I discovered that I really enjoy working with kids and have a knack for connecting with them. I learned so many new techniques for teaching, setting up a classroom, using a variety of resources, classroom management, testing and using technology.

Standards

I spoke with my cooperating teacher about standards and which subjects get the most attention. She believes that math and science are the ones that are getting the most attention because they are two of the subjects being evaluated for the standardized testing done at the end of the year. I have seen how math is a high priority in my cooperating classrooms because it is taught for the biggest chunk of time during the day. It is the first subject taught in one of my cooperating classrooms and taught right after lunch in the other classroom. I believe that it is meant to be done when students are best able to pay attention and learn. With science, I have seen the team of 4th grade teachers work together to teach the various standards of their science curriculum. The teachers specialize in a particular standard of a science unit and rotate students so that they learn from the teacher who is specialized in that standard. 

I have also seen the teachers put a lot of effort into helping students improve their reading skills. The English Language Arts standards expect the students in each grade to be able to comprehend certain things as they read, such as identifying the narrator's point of view . I have seen the teachers have the students read many texts as they practice identifying these literary elements. 

My cooperating teacher believes that social studies is a subject that gets pushed aside a little because of the time needed to focus on math, science and reading. She believes that standardize tests are fundamentally good because they give students and teachers standards to work for and can be measured at the end of the year.