Name: Julie Gonzalez

Date: 12/26/16
Experience Number: Diverse Field

Supervisors Name: Vudrogovic

Number of Assignment: Diverse Field Artifact

Fifth Setting Artifact

Reflection on Summer Camp
I spent the summer as a co-teacher and teachers assistant at the Weirton Christian Center
(WCC) during their Summer Program for students from grades 4th up to high school. I was able
to spend most of my time getting to know the staff and the children. Due to the large amount of
children I was able to get to know many of the children personally, because the two main
teachers and I would split the children into groups to cycle through the different activities such as
arts and crafts, computers, and spelling bees. I really enjoyed my experience at the WCC due to
the fact that I had not been in a classroom setting for an extended period of time due to content
area classes and a lack of available time.
One of my favorite moments was during a severe storm that caused some major flooding,
many of the teachers left to do missionary work, leaving my teachers and myself with almost 30
children from grades 4 up to 10. I was so excited to have all these students and work with all of
them on such varying levels and on so many different subjects. I have taken all of my content
area classes and know that it is hard to learn about how to teach a subject when you cannot
practice classroom management, which is a key factor to being able to effectively teach your
students. While co-teaching with Miss Jenny and Mr. Gary, I was able to learn a lot about
classroom management, especially since our classroom was not solely dedicated to a specific
grade. I have been in classrooms where the teachers yell at the children to gain their attention,
but Miss Jenny used a different method where she would clap and ask the kids to clap along with
her if they could hear her. I noticed that the children were more willing to quiet down, return
their attention to my co-teachers and listen to directions.

* All names have been changed due to confidentiality and in order to protect the student/child.

I had previously mentioned that during the day students were rotated from our classroom
to the computer lab to work on a literacy program. During this time my co-teacher left me in
charge of the remaining group until it was their turn in the computer lab, in order to work on
their Language Arts, specifically working on vocabulary and spelling, I would organize a
spelling bee. It was during this exercise that I realized the students were struggling immensely. I
had students from 4th-10th grade and I was amazed and in disbelief that the students were
struggling when I used words from a 5th grade-spelling list. I would sometimes alternate from 3rd5th grade spelling lists to provide a variety of challenging yet feasible list of words.
I had one student in particular named Emily*, somehow we got very close and I realized
she was the one struggling the most even though she was in 6th grade. So one day I sat down with
her and asked her if she wanted me to help her spell the word that she had just misspelled, while
my co-teacher took over the spelling bee. After that day, Emily came to me every single day
during each break and would ask me to spell words with her, out of her own accord. When we
first started she struggled spelling words like night or dinner correctly and would get easily
frustrated and wanted to give up. I taught her different methods to spelling words such as
sounding it out and repeating the word over and over again. Unfortunately, I had not taken EDU
345: Reading Diagnosis & Assessment class where I would have learned specific techniques
from the Success For All Reading Program that would have enabled me to help her more than I
did. However, with each correct word, her confidence was slowly building and increasing. I
made sure to use words that would challenge her and words that would be easy enough to not
frustrate her too much. I also repeated words to ensure that she was building her vocabulary and
remembering what we had worked on. It brought so much joy to count the words she had

* All names have been changed due to confidentiality and in order to protect the student/child.

correctly spelled at the end of the day and see her smile from taking pride in the fact that she had
spelled those words with minimal help on my part.

* All names have been changed due to confidentiality and in order to protect the student/child.