Field Experience Reflection

Marquetta Strait

April 15, 2013

Claflin University’s Life Improvement for Future Excellence (CU L.I.F.E)

Dr. Hicks

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Marquetta Strait

April 25, 2013

Claflin University’s Life Improvement for Future Excellence (CU L.I.F.E)

Dr. Hicks

Field Experience Reflection

While completing my field experience for Claflin University’s Life Improvement for Future

Excellence (CU L.I.F.E), I believe that I have grown professionally. I had the wonderful pleasure

of being placed in Ms.Black’s third grade classroom and Mr. Wingard’s fourth grade classroom

at Mitchell Math and Science Elementary School located in Charleston, South Carolina. Both

teachers teach the four content areas to their classes. Both teachers and their students were very

welcoming and increased my desire to teach. This opportunity has allowed me to be able to

experience a STEM-based school, gain a myriad of strategies to incorporate into my instruction,

and gather resources.

I was able to gain experience at this STEM-based school because I am in Claflin

University’s Learning Improvement for Future Excellence (CU L.I.F.E) program. While in this

program, we travel to Mitchell Math and Science Elementary school once a week. There, we

were assigned to a teacher for the ten-week program. While observing, we work with the

students and teachers throughout the class period. We also attend math and science strategy

sessions once a week. In these sessions, we discussed various strategies that we could

incorporate to improve out instruction in the classroom, such as Marzano’s nine instructional

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strategies. In addition to the math strategies, we also discussed how to create lesson plans to

make our lessons more organized. In our science strategies sessions, we discussed the five E’s,

engage, explore, explain, extend, and evaluate. In our session, we discussed several activities

teachers could use to get the students to grasp the vocabulary in a lesson. One activity is List,

Group, and Label. In this activity, the students are presented with a list of terms. The students

will have to group the words based on how they feel that the words should be categorized.

In my field experience classrooms, I had an excellent time. My mentor teachers always

kept their students engaged, incorporated higher order thinking activities, used contextual

problems, and incorporated collaborative learning within their classrooms.

The following is an activity Ms. Black’s students completed in class while learning about

reading math charts:

During activity time, Ms. Black split her class into two groups by gender. As I worked with the

girls, she worked with the boys on the same assignment. Both groups were working on reading

charts that has keys, such as one rose represents two mothers. While working with the girls, I

had them to work together and complete their worksheet. I first had the students read the title

and then look at the key. I explained that the key on charts are essential because it allows the

people to easily count the items on the chart. For instance, if someone wanted to show 15 bags

of candy, they would not draw out all 15 bags. Preferably, they would give their chart a key that

would represent each bag to be counted as three bags of candy. In return, the person would only

have to draw five bags of candy, opposed to draw fifteen bags,

The girls did well on reading the chart and identifying which category had the most items. I

found that the students had the most difficulty in finding the range of line plots. On the

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worksheet’s line plots, there were numbers that had “x” marks and there were some that did not.

At first, the students would immediately look at the largest number and smallest numbers on the

line plot and try to find the range. I had to continuously explain to them that they were to look

for the highest and smallest number on the number with at least one “x”. After finding those two

numbers, they then needed to subtract. Another posed problem was that some of the students

were adding instead of subtracting and trying to do mental math that would result in an

incorrect answer due to them not grasping the concept. After several tries, the students having

the difficulty eventually grasped the concept.

While working with the students, I wanted to note the importance of being able to read a

chart. I believe this is very essential because many students believe that outside of the

classroom, they will not see this content again. By explaining the purpose of learning these

concepts, students are more apt to absorb the information.

The following is an activity Mr. Wingard’s students completed in class while learning

about circuits:

In Mr. Wingard’s fourth grade class, the students were learning about circuits. The students

were seated in their groups and each group had a circuit model with a battery and two wires.

The class discussed that conductors were all metal items versus insulators, which were non-

metal items, such as plastic. As a class activity, the students were instructed to find objects

around the classroom that they wanted to examine. After the students would choose their

objects, they then were to use their circuit model and connect the two wires to the object. If the

object was a conductor, the circuit’s motor would run. If not, the student had to classify the

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object as an insulator. Mr. Wingard had one group to go out with me into the hall to find some

objects outside the classroom to examine.

We first examined the water fountain, which was a conductor. The students then wanted to

examine the metal door handles, staples that were used to hang documents on the wall, and my

necklace and bracelets. They also wanted to try a metal bulletin board frame. Clearly, the item

looked metal, but it would not hurt the students to still examine the frame. When one of the

students placed the wires to the frame, the motor did not run. We were all shocked. I told her to

try to connect the wire again, and to no avail, it still did not work. When we entered the

classroom, Mr. Wingard had the students to share their findings. When he questioned my group,

they mentioned that the frame was not a conductor. He was surprised as well. He questioned

whether they had the wires on the same plank of the frame. He demonstrated on another metal

object that had to rods of metal. They responded that they indeed had the wires on the same

portion of the frame and it still did not work. Mr. Wingard then responded that if this is true, as

a class, they would then need to reevaluate their statement that all metal is a conductor or that

the bulletin board frame was indeed some form of plastic material that was a metal look-alike.

Being that I am a future educator, Ms. Black offered advice that would be beneficial to

my instruction. She advised me to unpack the standards. I can do this by searching for key

words and making sure that I understand exactly what the standard is and what the students must

know. From there, I can begin my research. Ms. Black often uses her provided lessons as a

guide and adds activities that she believes her students would relate and enjoy. She admits that

in the beginning of her teaching profession, she would over plan, which resulted in her having

too much for the students to do. She recommends that less is better.

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Mr. Wingard acknowledges that lesson planning is a chore, but an extremely useful one if

you use them to your advantage. His advice to me is that I should never plan too far in advance.

I should allow my long range plans and state curriculum guides to assist me. Students should be

assessed to identify any misconceptions, as well as mastery, before moving to unfamiliar or more

challenging content. He uses lessons as a matrix to guide him through small group activities,

texts, and materials that he uses on a weekly basis. The management of instructional materials

gets confusing in an inclusion classroom setting where you teach all subjects, so his lesson plans

serve to map out each content area and the constantly shifting instructional groupings within

each area.

Lastly, I was able to gather resources that will be beneficial for my instruction. While

working with my mentors’ students, I was able to work with them and participate in their

classroom activities. For instance, Mr. Wingard’s students were taught problem solving steps by

using a rap called “Dr. QVOSAC”. In this rap, it tells the students to question, visualize,

operate, solve, answer, and check. This is a great strategy to use in the classroom to get students

to comprehend that they have to use their critical thinking and reasoning skills while solving

mathematical problems. In addition to strategies, I was also able to receive lesson ideas from

Ms. Black. I would definitely use her activities, such as appealing to the five senses to introduce

descriptive writing and reading math charts.

There are many obstacles that I have to overcome as a future educator. I plan to do this by

setting goals. I truly believe that my experience in the CU L.I.F.E program and my education

courses has definitely prepared me for the classroom. The purposes of Common Core are for

students to develop a good number sense, build their content background, and actually “do”

mathematics. I believe that all of the mentioned factors in conjunction with obtaining a good

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education, being knowledgeable of issues of education, and maintaining to aid our youth will

allow me to become a successful educator.