1st observation

I'm so glad I'm doing my observations at an elementary school. The kids are so darn cute! The teacher I'm assigned to is having me spend the first 2 hours assisting in a kindergarten classroom that is quite diverse. I didn't actually get to talk to the teacher, just because of how the day was going, but from what I gather there are about 16 students in the class (several of them were coming and going with different specialists). At least 3 are English Language Learners, but I think others are bilingual. She had me sit at a table with a student who didn't speak any English at the beginning of the school year, but has learned a lot since then.

When I arrived in the classroom they were having circle time. The teacher was reviewing a story they had just read about a bunny who got stuck on an icy pond. She was also modeling a picture they were going to color, cut, and glue on their own following circle time. I was surprised how squirlly the kids were. The 3-yr-olds at my son's preschool sit and listen much better, but then most of the kids at his preschool have probibly been in a formal child care center since they were infants and know the expectations; whereas a lot of children entering kindergarten have never had experiences with this kind of a setting before.

After group time the kids all went to their tables to work on their projects independently while the teacher worked with groups of 4-5 on phonics. There was an assistant in the class who was kept busy keeping students on track.

For anybody who has not ever worked with young children, just so you know, 90% of a teacher's time is spent addressing social/behavor issues and 10% goes into traditional teaching of the 3 R's. For example, the students at the table I was sitting with kept having conflicts over where the bin of carayons was to sit. It couldn't be exactly in the middle or nobody could reach it. If it went to the left, the students on the right complained, I think you know where I'm going with this. Then at some point the ELL student I was observing started to mimic everything the little girl next to him was saying. He wasn't trying to be bothersome, but she didn't appreciate it. I thought he did an excellent job mimicing her pronounciations!

When it was time for the class to go to lunch I headed back to the ESL room. I observed a 4th grade math lesson (talk about kids off task!). And then I checked my phone, only to see that my son's daycare had tried calling about 50 times. He was running a fever and was really sad. So I left early. I look forward to going back again. I'm going to work on teaching materials for 5-6 year-old ESL students. My lesson should be fun.