Reflection #13

The final week of student teaching was awesome. I am going to miss those sweet fourth graders so much! Since our teaching portion was over we got to focus on helping them with guided reading groups and their current writing projects. Guided reading has often been one of my favorite parts of the day. During the guided reading time I would help the students in my reading group with a particular book. Throughout the reading the students would stop and write on sticky notes their predictions, connections to real the real world, summaries, vocabulary words, questions, answers, and many other things. My favorite part about it is their interest in reading and how much they love to tell you their opinions and express their excitement. Since there are thirty one students in the class it is often difficult for Mrs. Schino to meet with all of the groups every day so it was nice to be able to help her share the load.

For their writing assignments they wrote about a turkey named Patricia and her greedy owner named Pete. They were in partner groups and one of them would write from Pete's perspective and the other would write from Patricia's perspective. At the end of their writing they made a book with personalized pictures on every page. Their stories turned out so great and it was wonderful to just be a part of their writing process. I got to help them edit and revise their drafts and see their work from beginning to end. This is the only other activity during the week that Katie and I got to help with a project that integrated the arts.

This field experience has been such an amazing opportunity. I have learned so much in my experience with those great fourth graders. My experience with the arts in the classroom has been so great. I have come away with a lot of great ideas and ways to incorporate the arts in every core curriculum. I have also seen how much the children love it and how beneficial it is. It gets their brain stimulated and going so they are better prepared mentally for retaining information. Integrating the arts has also helped me see how excited the students get when they are introduced to a new topic. Again, I am a great believer in the arts and I can't wait to use it in my own classroom when that day comes.