Name Mary Wyrzykowski Supervisor's Name Prof.

Vudrogovic

Date December 2, 2016 Number of Assignment Reflection Paper

Experience Number 2

This second Field Experience gave me the opportunity to apply what I have learned from my classes

as well as my other Field Experience. Having done Field Experience and the ELISA Program, I feel

more comfortable in the classroom. However, each classroom, each teacher, and each student is unique.

I had to become accustomed to these aspects in addition to being in a 7th and 8th grade classroom. The

students at this age seem more engaged and energetic then their older high school counterparts. I am

slowly learning how to use this energy to aid instruction. I did this in my second lesson by having the

students stand up and choose one ice cream flavor out of three. I see my cooperating teacher use the 7 th

graders' energy through the implementation of projects and group work. Silent Speed Ball is used in the

8th grade classroom to reward good behavior. When I have my own classroom I will learn what kind of

things I can and cannot do with each group of students.

Even though the application of some concepts will depend on the class, I should still have ground

rules in place. Taking Introduction to the Exceptional Individual, EDU 112, has given me guidelines for

these standards. By having a professor who is simultaneously teaching students her own classroom , I

am able to hear ideas of what is effective from a first-hand account. I then see the methods of

cooperative teaching and accommodating students with special needs in my cooperating teacher's

classroom. EDU 112 also introduced me to direct instruction and strategy instruction. I tried to

implement the strategy instruction during my first lesson by writing the steps to dividing numbers written

in scientific notation on the board, emphasizing the first letter of each step. In light of new information

learned from this class, it may have also been helpful to make task cards of this process for the students

who would need an occasional reminder of the process. The concepts I have learned in EDU 112 will

help me work with students with special needs, their parents, and special education teachers in the future

Content Area Reading, EDU 320, has helped me think of creative ways to implement concepts and
strategies. One concept that EDU 320 stresses is that every content area teacher is also a teacher of

reading. When assignments in EDU 320 called for explanations on how I would implement a specific

concept or strategy into my future classroom I was often somewhat skeptical. There were strategies I

envisioned myself using, such as the Sketch-to-Stretch. One requirement for EDU 320 was to construct

a Big Book and teach a lesson with it. It was not until I was discussing the lesson with my cooperating

teacher that I realized the benefits of using the Big Book. The Big Book allowed me to teach to multiple

learning styles. In addition to me relating the information orally for the auditory learners, the Big Book

itself and the posters I had made reached out to the visual learners, having the students stand up as part

of voting for their flavor may have been memorable for the kinesthetic learners. This experience with the

Big Book has positively influenced my outlook on the other strategies discussed in EDU 320. In the

end, it is often the little things that teachers put a little more effort into to create that help students learn.

You will never truly know whether or not something will work until you try.

While I have learned from the confines of the University classrooms, one of the best teachers is

experience. Before each lesson that I had to teach, I had a perception of how it would go. The first

lesson plan went well. When analyzing the lesson, it was brought to my attention that I should talk

slower and keep pauses short. The reasoning behind these suggestions made sense. Teachers must talk

slow enough and articulate well enough for the students to understand. While pauses allow students to

copy down what is written, they also leave moments of silence in which students could interject

irrelevant questions. Knowing the kind of students you have in each class will help in judging how long

pauses should be.

The main lesson to be learned from my second lesson was to not let mistakes affect you. At the

beginning of the lesson, I made a mental math mistake. Even though this mistake was trivial, it did not

ease my already nervous mind. Unintentionally, this one small mistake lead to others. Everyone makes

mistakes. The key is in how you handle them. The students can tell if you are nervous or uncertain.

When students perceive that the teacher is uncertain, they may be less likely to listen to him or her.
Confidence is a mixture of knowing the content area and speaking front of the class. A deficit in one can

lead to a deficit in the other.

The last thing I can do is to learn from my mistakes and my successes and move on. Student

Teaching will be a test of everything that I have learned. I will most likely not teach exactly the same

way as my cooperating teacher, but it will be a way that will fit me and my students. In the classroom

everyone learns, the students as well as the the teacher. I will learn from my students, from other

teachers, inservice days, and other resources. EDU 320 made us aware of the possibilities for

professional development. I also had the opportunity to observe an inservice day at my Field Placement

this semester. During this time, I learned about various methods of virtual assessment, such as kahoot

and plickers, and Google Classroom. I look forward to implementing these techniques in my future

classroom.