Field Post 8

Today was my fifth and final visit to Chippewa Elementary School as my 10 hours came to an end. Once again, the day started out with the morning routine of desk organization and announcements. At the conclusion of the announcements Ms. Clancy stated that it was time to get new seats. She went around the room and told each kid where they would now be sitting. However, instead of moving their items from inside their desks, the students had to physically move their desks to their new location. New seats also meant new teams. Ms. Clancy has the desks in groups of 4 or 5, and those are considered to be teams. Now, each team had to have its own team name and since it is winter time, the theme had to be revolved around that. The class took about 10 minute to compare their similar and different interests about winter and with that they were able to create a name for their group. One name I noted was the "Hot Chocolate Snowball Fighters". I also noted how long it took each group to find a name that everybody agreed on, but once it was all unanimous it was time to move on in the day (We did the exact same thing when I was in Ms. Clancy's class 11 years ago). Next, it was time to do rotating station activities. I did not get to observe this since Ms. Clancy had me doing other things. There were two students in the class that got every single problem wrong on their subtraction homework, so she had me take them out into the hallway and go through the problems one by one. The two students, Ellery and Mario, caught onto the subtraction almost instantly. I believe that when they went home to do their homework they took the easy way out and did not think to regroup the problems. We walked through each problem and they got the concept down pretty well. I just told them that they had to be careful with these types of problems and note when you have to regroup. They understood and went back to the classroom. Next, Ms. Clancy had me take out another two students, Christian and Owen, to work on them with subtraction as well. They did not get every problem wrong on the homework but there was a fair amount. I gave them different subtraction problems and had them write them down and work through them on their white boards. Owen and Christian are good friends and easily got off topic and got into different conversations, drawing on each other's boards and stating that they did not want to do this. Multiple times I had to get their attention back but I think I handled it pretty well. At this age group there will be students like this and it is important to know how to deal with them. We wrapped up our white board lesson and got ready for music class. The students lined up and walked down the hallway. Today in music the students started watching the movie, "The Nutcracker". The students were laying down and covering every inch of the floor and they were all engaged by the movie. Mrs. Ferguson did not once have to ask them to be quiet since they seemed to really enjoy the movie. That wrapped up music class and it was time for me to leave. It hit me that this was my last day doing field hours with Ms. Clancy and it actually made me sad. I really enjoyed working with her and her class and the students all really grew on me by the end of my field hours. These field hours helped reassure me that I am passionate about this field and that this is what I want to do with my life. Overall I had a very positive experience.