Thursday, March 1: Third Field Observation

Today, my partner and I conducted our preassessment! Prior to conducting our assessment, we were able to observe the class in a language arts lesson that involved writing in their journals and drawing a picture that correlated to their story/sentence. The students also had word boards at their desks. They have been working on these words in various lessons throughout the week, and Ms. S was checking their awareness and moving them on to a new listif they were ready. My partner and I were checking each student and giving them a new list as Ms. S was finishing the morning arrival routine. I was very suprised to find that all of the students I worked with were able to identify the words on the list, and many of the students were able to identify most of the words on the new list. This makes me think about how I will make sure advanced students get the attention they need, while working with students who are less advanced to keep them moving along. I'm sure this is something I will have to think about and will learn with time. The students spent a while working on their stories and I had the opportunity to listen to many of them. One student in particular struck me today. He is a student who is very quite. He tends to sit in the back during group time, and he doesn't normally respond in a timely manner when the teacher asks him a question. I was so suprised to see how advanced his writing is and how well he can identify words. He is such a sweet child who is extremely intelligent. I really appreciate that I am being exposed to such a wide variety of students. Before going into this experience, I had so many ideas about student behavior that have been proven wrong. After journal writing, my partner and I were able to give our preassessent.

Its funny how quickly students will become talkative and unfocused when they are in transition. So, my partner and I have learned to use Ms. S saying to get their attention. 1,2,3 all eyes on me. It really works! So, we passed out the assessment and had to give very explicit directions. There were several possible problems with the assessemnt that we (the teacher, my partner, and I) talked about before the students arrived. One was if the students were going to be able to translate what they new about water into a picture representation and have it mean to them what it meant to us. Also, because this is such an exploratory time for the students, they are not use to being 'tested.' The teacher was afraid that the students may not respond at all if they felt they had to put a correct answer. We tried to alleviate these fears by explaining the pictures for every questions and reminding them that they is no right answer. The students were able to catch on quickly and the assessment was completed with many problems. I could tell that some students were still confused about the picture representations, but other students understood the concept. Another responce we encountered was the students were not working individually very well. Up to this point, it has been okay if they look at what other students are doing. This is not wrong to them. So, I feel that this will definitely interfer with the results of the preassessent. If we were given another opportunity to reconduct the preassessment and had more time, I might have pulled a small group outside of the room (or even one child at a time). I feel like that environment would have eased their fears of being right, and I would have been able to make more accurate assessments about each child's individual knowledge on the topic. Even though we did have some problems arise, overall the assessment went really well. After we collected their booklets, we demonstrated some of the concepts were were assessing. The students were so excited to be able to watch this, and I heard many students talking about if they choose the icon that corresponded with what they were seeing. It was great to see that they were evaluating themselves and building on prior knowledge! I'm really excited to start teaching the unit!