Context for Learning Description of School and Students

Trinity Christian College Field Experience Form

Context for Learning

Description of School and Students

About the School Where You Are Observing or doing Field Experience

School Name and City: LEARN Charter School

Type of School: Elementary school

Setting: Urban

Write your responses to the three questions below in paragraph form.

1.     List any special features of the school or classroom setting (e.g., themed magnet, classroom aide, bilingual, co-taught with a special education teacher, pull-out program).

I am an instructional assistant in a regular education classroom.

2.     Describe any district, school, or cooperating teacher requirements or expectations that affects the planning or delivery of instruction, such as required curricula, pacing plan, use of specific instructional strategies, or standardized tests.

Donoghue charter school uses NWEA, MAP and in the past, ISAT tests as a means to assess student growth.  We use the Everyday Math curriculum.

3.    For special education only: List any educators with specialized expertise in the school/district (e.g., specific disabilities, subject-specific pedagogy, English language development, speech therapists).

About the Students in this Class [Give a brief or one word response]

1.     Estimated percentage of students eligible for free/reduced lunch:99%

2.     Grade level(s):PreK – 5th

3.     Number of

a.     students in the class: 26

b.     males: 14

females: 12

c.     English language learners: 0

d.     students identified as gifted and talented:

e.     students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) or 504 plans: 3

4.     Complete the chart below to summarize required accommodations or modifications for students receiving special education services and/or students who are gifted and talented as they will affect instruction. As needed, consult with your cooperating teacher to complete the chart. The first row has been completed in italics as an example. Use as many rows as you need.

Special Education Category	Number of Students	Accommodations, Modifications, and/or Pertinent IEP Goals
Example: Learning Disability	Example: 4	Example: Close monitoring, follow up, and Resource Room
Learning Disability	1	One to One Paraprofessional, out of classroom minutes, additional testing minutes, differentiated class and home work
Behavioral disorders	2	Out of classroom minutes, student support services

About the Class You Observed

1.     How much time is devoted each day to instruction in the classroom? Describe the class periods (if applicable)? Choose a content area of your specialty or major. How much time is devoted to teaching that subject? Ninety percent of the day is dedicated to classroom instruction.  Students work collaboratively in small groups.  Students have a 45 minute special (art, ballroom dance, gym) 4 days a week,  a two hour literacy block and one hour writing block five days a week, fifty minutes of lunch and recess and one and a half hours of everyday mathematics daily.

2.     Is there any ability grouping or tracking? If so, please describe how it affects your class.

       Students are grouped by ability for literacy, based on NWEA test scores.   Students are grouped by  ability for math, with higher students spread amongst on track and lower students.

 

3.     Identify any textbook or instructional program you primarily use for instruction. If a textbook, please provide the title, publisher, and date of publication.

Everyday Math- The Center for Elementary mathematics and science education.

4.     List other resources (e.g., SMARTBoard, manipulatives, online resources) used for instruction in this class.  The classroom is equipped with a SMARTboard, a shared laptop cart that is used for multiple grade levels, and a wide variety of math manipulatives.

5. What do you know about what your students know, what can they do, and what are they learning to do? What do you know about your students’ everyday experiences, cultural backgrounds and practices, and interests?

       We are currently only two weeks into the school year, so we are still getting to know the students and families.  We have spent a great deal of time working with students on teambuilding and getting to know you activities that have really helped us get to know who our students are and what some of their academic goals are.  I have worked with multiple grade levels,  so I have had the opportunity to work with the siblings of some of my current students. 

  

6. Describe one teaching event. What best practices in teaching were used?

     One thing that my school does exceptionally well is connecting content to the lesson goals.       

     Math groups work collaboratively on tasks daily.  They are able to work with peers to work through problems.  Objectives and goals are clearly listed on the board before teaching begins and revisited     after teaching and activities are done.  Report cards are standard aligned so that the emphasis is on students being able to achieve specific goals, and skills.

Module 1

     Last year I spent time as a classroom assistant in preschool.  I could not wait for the opportunity to work with the smallest and by far the cutest kids in the school.  When I walked in the classroom on the first day of school while they were indeed the most adorable kids that I’d ever seen gathered in one place,  we clearly spoke two different languages.  When I told them that, ‘we were on silent,’ five little voices asked me what silence meant.  When I told them to, ‘make a circle on the rug,’ there were several small children that stood frozen completely confused by my direction.  I realized very quickly what the words, developmentally appropriate meant.  In visiting Piaget’s four stages of development I thought about how important knowing what is developmentally appropriate for our students is.  In the preoperational stage of development when students are developing language and using symbols to represent objects, spouting words that are unfamiliar to them will be extremely unproductive.  It would be helpful to know that telling your classroom of four year olds that they will be going on a field trip in three weeks will result in your students asking you daily for fifteen days, “is today the day we’re going to the zoo?” 

     Adversely, I think we must be wary of underestimating a child’s abilities, solely based on their developmental levels.  As my year in preschool progressed, I watched students learn and grow.  Parents were often amazed by what they saw their 4 year olds doing in class.  Students could pour their milk into a cup, open bags of graham crackers and clean up their lunch trays after a meal.  Students would learn how to count one to one, recognize alphabets and their sounds and many were even reading by the end of the year.  Parents would often wonder how they knew what to do at school and often could not achieve the same results at home.    Environment, routine and expectation were all factors that attributed to their success. 

     Teaching is a balance of constructing, balancing and conveying knowledge in a way that is ‘just right’ for our intended students.  In reading chapter two of Anita Woolfolks, Educational Psychology (Woolfolk 61), it states,” Students must be neither bored by work that is too simple nor left behind by teaching they cannot understand.”  Woolfolk references Hunt in saying that, “disequilibrium must be kept “just right” to encourage growth.”  Just as parents and teachers many times enable students by setting low expectations, you cannot expect to set the bar so high and outside of the student’s realm of understanding that it is not requiring any real thinking or growth.  Looking back on that preschool class we often had parents who expected that their students would be performing simple equations by the end of the year.  We had parents who swore that they had taught their four year olds multiplication and division.  Although that student may or may not have been able to memorize the words, they did not comprehend the process that it took to really know the material.  It is much more feasible that we teach kids in preschool to count one to one and maybe even teach students how to make groups of numbers and objects. 

     The psychological development of our students will vary.  As teachers we need to know how to nurture that process so that we are allowing them to think critically, understand and explain the processes that they are learning and challenging themselves to further their understandings.