Journal #4-Domain #4-Teaching and Instruction

Journal #4-Domain #4-Teaching and Instruction
Describe different ways (strategies) the teacher presents material to the students.
Ms. Faith relays a lot on worksheets. The worksheets generally have a math or reading object, most have a drawing and coloring in aspect as well. The students sometime fill in the worksheet while Ms. Faith is teaching the material, then they are asked to do the last questions by themselves or in a group.
A lot of material is presented through books. In our 7 week penguin until, were the students learn about different types, environment, and habits of penguins. Whenever Ms. Faith is introducing a new type of penguin, she reads a story about the certain animal.

What type of student groupings does the teacher use? (one-on-one, pairs, small groups, whole class?)
Ms. Faith uses a variety of different types of grouping. Students work independently only during the morning warm-up worksheet or when they are taking an assessment.
The student’s desks are in groups of 4, so the students when working on things at their desks are allowed to ask the other students for help. Small groups are also used for group reading and the different stations in the morning.
The grouping that is seen the most in this classroom is whole class. Most of the day is spent on the community rug. The students do move around a lot, but for instruction as well as reading the rug is used. When all the students are on the rug, they are working as an entire class.

What techniques are used to assess and evaluate learning? Describe any assessment technique you have observed.
The assessments within the classroom are mainly used to help track the student’s progress. Since in first grade there are no letter grades, the student is more graded upon their progress. Every week the students take a spelling test. It is just a short 5 word test about the letter pattern they were learning for the week. For example, last week they learned about long e, so they spelling test was words like beet or feet.
The students are given a math assessment every other week. The assessments basically have the same objectives but get harder by the week. The last couple of weeks they have been building upon their skills of counting by five, so the assessment was about adding and subtracting by five. In the previous weeks, they have been tested for adding and subtracting by 2 and 3. Ms. Faith writes down the progress of the students by the assessments, then sends the tests home, so the parents can see their child’s progress.

What are you learning about this age group?
I am learning so much about this age group. The thing I am learning the most about them is how good they all are at phonics. When they are reading a story and don’t know the word, they are able to use their proper knowledge to sound out the word. Although the students are great readers, they seem to struggle with spelling. They have trouble with one syllable words, but are able to read words with multiply syllables.


What do students enjoy and dislike most?
The students enjoy games. It seems like objective taught in the classroom is turned into a game. Every time Ms. Faith teaches a new objective in her lesson, there is usually a game to follow it.
The students also enjoy to be read out loud to. They really get into the story and connect with the characters in the story. When a story is read that the children like, they usually act out the characters of the story during recess.
The children seem to dislike when Ms. Faith talks for more then a few minutes without interacting with them. She rarely ever does this, but the students start to get every antsy if they are unengaged in the material.

Do you see technology being used in the classroom?
I do not see much technology used in this classroom. Each student probably uses the 2 classroom computers three times a week. This is used when the students are at their morning stations or during choice time on Friday afternoon. I have only seen the computers being used for math games. On the desktop of the computer there are also other programs, dealing with writing and phonics, but Ms. Faith says they never use those games.

Ms. Faith also has her own computer in the classroom. She mainly uses it to check her e-mail during silent reading, which her in-box is always loaded with letters from faculty and administers. She sometimes will use it to cross reference things in class.

In a paragraph, reflect in an analytical manner, what you learned about Teaching and the Instruction. You must integrate at least two ideas from class discussion or the text.

The text discussed how it is important to integrate a variety of different ways to present material to the students. Ms. Faith utilizes technology, games, worksheets, readings, or projects to help the students understand the curriculum. The students see a variety of different assessments within the school day, so they will not be doing the same thing all the time.

In class we talked about the different types of assessments, summative and formative. I have learned from my observations that in earlier elementary school there really is no such thing as a summative grade; your grade depends on your progress as a student.