Elise Bartz

Fieldwork Observations
Fall 2017
Dr. Dotson
Educ. 401

Reflection #1 - Reflect on your first day in the placement. What did you do? How did
you integrate yourself into the classroom? Where is the school located? What is the
composition of the student body and staff (gender, race, SES)? What was your first
impression of the school?

My first day at Glade Spring Middle School in 7th grade was a success. I was

very nervous walking in and did not know what to expect, however, I relaxed after

meeting all the kids and introducing myself to them. After observing the first class, I

immediately knew that this age was going to be very fun but very challenging. On

my first day, they were learning about pronouns and also reading part of a story.

Each class was very talkative, but my teacher was really great at letting them talk

but knowing how to control the noise. They were all very well behaved and usually

calmed down and listened when my mentor teacher requested. I mostly observed

on the first day and introduced myself to each class. I also tried to start memorizing

names and helped my teacher copy and pass out papers.

The school is located right off the exit in Glade Spring, VA. It is a very rural

area but is a very nice, large school building. There are three main hallways and

each grade is located in a different hallway, creating a sense of community among

each grade. In this school, a lot of the children live below the poverty line and after

speaking with my teacher I was shocked at how many of the students come from

tough situations. On my first day observing, the class was sharing a journal entry

and discussing things that they struggled with. One student raised his hand and
stated that he and his family had not had water for a week. This student was not

asking for sympathy but just stated this as a fact and went on about his day. While I

have been exposed to poverty and am aware that I am very blessed, I was shocked at

how open this student was about his situation. In that moment, I realized that this

job is so much more than teaching, but is about being an advocate for the kids who

have no one at home to believe in them.

At the end of the day, I was very excited about starting my practicum at Glade

Spring Middle School and could not wait to teach and get to know the kids in each

class.
Reflection #2 - Reflect on the kinds of assessments (formal and informal) you see used in
your classroom. How do these assessments inform curriculum and instruction?

In the classroom I was in, assessments were varied and my teacher always had

discrete ways of assessing her students. Often times, assessments were taken through

Teenbiz 3000. This online reading website gave a reading test before students could read

the articles and gave my teacher a score of what reading level each student was on based

on the test. After the students took the test, the website would adjust to fit the reading

level of the student. The students really enjoyed picking out nonfiction articles and

reading about things that interested them. After reading the articles, students were

expected to take the reading comprehension quiz on the article. This quiz gave my

teacher a way to assess reading comprehension among students and gave her an idea of

what students needed extra support.

Some other ways that my mentor teacher assessed her students was through

informal assessments such as daily assignments and journal entries. Through theses

activities, my teacher was able to see where each student needed help and could read

through journal entries to check for sentence structure and punctuation.

Formal assessments typically consisted of vocabulary quizzes and reading

comprehension tests after reading a story. Grammar quizzes were also given every two

weeks and focused on a certain grammar rule that had been taught that week.

Overall, formal and informal assessments were given daily and were essential to

the curriculum. While formal assessments were given less frequent, informal assessment

occurred multiple times in each class period. These assessments allowed my mentor

teacher to always be aware of where each student stood academically, and gave her a

clear picture of what students needed extra support.

Reflection #3 - Reflect on the ways in which the teacher or you determine childrens prior
knowledge about an idea, topic, or concept. How is this prior knowledge used to plan
instruction?

As a teacher, knowing how to activate a students prior knowledge is essential

when planning each lesson. In the classroom I was in this semester, my teacher was

always very good at connecting student experience to the lesson she was going to teach.

To activate prior knowledge, a teacher first has to know the audience and what is

relevant to students. For the 7th grade classroom I was in, this meant talking about the

interests of students or anything that had to do with their experience. After she had

students make connections and talk about their experience, she would introduce a concept

in a way that suited the discussion that just happened.

A way that my teacher determined prior knowledge regarding reading was

through a reading assessment that was given at the beginning of the year. This short test

determined the reading level of each student and gave my teacher an idea of where the

students were and how much support they would need during the coming year.

Questioning was also a technique my teacher used to activate prior knowledge

and determine what her students knew. If students seemed to be comfortable with a topic

she would move on, and if they were not she would spend more time on that particular

topic.

It has been proven that when students make connections to a text they are reading

or a concept they are learning their comprehension increases. Because of this, my teacher

always tried to make her lesson engaging and connect her lessons to topics that would

appeal and could be important to a 7th grade student.

 Reflection #4 - Reflect on a lesson you observed. How did the teacher introduce and
teach the lesson?

Of all the lessons I was able to watch and learn from, my favorite lesson I

observed was a grammar lesson on personal pronouns. My mentor teacher was

great at connecting with her students and keeping them involved, even when doing

something like grammar. She started off the lesson with activating their prior

knowledge and asking the students if they knew what personal pronouns were and

if they had ever used them before. After this introduction, the students discussed

and then asked some questions that lead into the lesson. My teacher then used the

projector and the grammar textbook to introduce and give examples of personal

pronouns. She highlighted the idea of how to use personal pronouns and listed all of

them on the board. After this, she asked students to do some warm up activities in

the book and said that when they were done she would call on students to come up

to the board and fill in the activity. Stating this made the students accountable and

they worked harder knowing that they might be called on to answer a question.

After the students completed the activity, they came up to the board and filled in the

blanks. When everything was corrected, my teacher reviewed one more time and

provided the students with a five-question exit slip to check for understanding.

When all the students passed the exit slip in, my teacher played a song from the

flocabulary website that was about pronouns. This last video was fun but also listed

the personal pronouns one more time to be sure that ALL students remembered

what had been taught.

 Reflection #5 - Reflect on the opportunities children have to work cooperatively in
groups to solve problems or to work on projects/assignments. How is the learning
documented?

Because my teacher has her desks arranged in groups of six, cooperative

learning and discussion happened naturally. This can be both a blessing and a curse

to give 7th graders the freedom to be in group situations. While really good

discussion and group work can happen, talking was also a problem. While my

mentor teacher debated moving the desks into rows many times, she ultimately felt

that the positives outweighed the negatives and that group work was essential to

learning.

A lot of the cooperative learning that took place was helpful and elicited

strong discussion and the students enjoyed learning if they were in a group. My

teacher allowed them to work together when doing daily assignments and often

encouraged them to ask one another for help before they asked a teacher. Some

tests were also group work and the students always did better when in pairs during

this time.

Group projects were also assigned and my teacher provided guidance and

gave each member of the group a specific job for these projects. By doing this, she

made sure that each student was expected to do his or her part and one student

could not do it all.

While cooperative learning does not work all the time, it is a very important

part of a differentiated classroom and was used in a positive way in the classroom I

observed.
 Reflection #6 - Reflect on the classroom management strategies you observe in your
placement. How do classroom, teacher, and school expectations affect classroom
management? How are classroom rules established? Do students have input? How
are positive behaviors reinforced and how are inappropriate behaviors dealt with?

In my opinion, classroom management is one of the hardest things a teacher

has to master. While teaching the content is very important, if a teacher does not

have control in a classroom, learning will not happen and bad behavior will ruin the

classroom environment.

While each teacher develops their own way of maintaining control in their

classroom, my mentor teacher established a positive rapport with her students and

maintained positive relationships to gain students respect. Her main way of keeping

the classroom in order was built off of her relationship with each student. If a

student was not doing what he/she was asked, she would simply give them a look

and the student would almost always behave. This was because of the relationship

and the respect they had for her. If this tactic did not work, she would pull the

student out and speak with them one on one, often times asking why they were

acting out and if something was going on. Lastly, she would give silent lunch or in

school suspension for extreme behaviors. However, this happened very

infrequently, if ever.

My teacher offered me a lot of advice in this area and reassured me that it

took her years to learn and that she continues to learn each day. The one thing that

my teacher said she had only done a few times in her years of teaching was yell at a

class. She said that it was never helpful to yell or show frustration and that it never
resulted in a positive outcome. I found this very helpful and applauded my teacher

for never showing her frustration to her students in my time with her.
Reflection #7 - Reflect on how the needs of inclusion and ELL students are met. What
special accommodations and support are available to these students?

Out of the three classrooms I worked with this semester, two were inclusion

classes and all had students were at various capability levels. While there were no

ELL students in the classroom I was in, extra support was available at the school if

needed.

At Glade, aides are readily available and are a huge part of the classroom

environment. In two out of the three classes I was in, two of the classes had aides

present each day to help the teacher and give the students extra support.

The aides are there for the students with IEPs and help with reading and

would sit with certain students who needed the most support. My teacher and the

aides conferred about lessons plans and tried to integrate extra support into each

lesson. For example, my teacher always read everything out loud and also showed

explicit examples on the board. This accommodated students who had lower

reading levels and gave a visual representation of what was being done. She also

used videos and audio recordings of books to help students who struggled with

reading fluency.

Inclusion students were able to be in regular classes and teachers and aides

provided that extra support in order to incorporate them into each class. This

helped theses students immensely and helped with their confidence. Because they

were no longer being pulled out and made to feel embarrassed about their

academics, these students could feel valued and were often times the hardest

workers and made the best grades when compared to the average student.
 Reflection #8 - Reflect on your practicum experience. What are the many roles a
teacher has to play? Were any of these roles not apparent to you before the
practicum? What ideas/learning will you take with you into your student teaching?
What was the most positive and the most negative thing you experienced in your
classroom experience?

My practicum experience was a positive one and I learned a lot from my

mentor teacher and from the students I taught. A teacher wears many hats in a

classroom and my teacher was no exception. While teaching English was her main

goal each day, she was also a counselor, and advocate, a collaborator, and so much

more. At the most basic level, a teacher is there to teach, however, a teacher is also

there to support students, build meaningful relationships with them, and teach them

about life and how to interact with the world. In the classroom I was in, many of the

students came from rough situations and my teacher knew that in order for her to

be able to teach English, she first had to establish relationships and show each

student that she was an advocate for them. This takes time and patience, but it is

worth it in the end. When students are shown that teachers care, they will want to

work harder and if a teacher expects them to succeed, more than likely they will

want to succeed.

Before my practicum experience, I truly did not realize how many roles a

teacher has to play. It is one thing to hear my education professors say that we have

to build relationships and create a comfortable classroom environment, but it is

another thing to see it in action.

I have learned so much about myself and the education profession during my

time in 7thgrade. I now feel that I am prepared to step into my role as a teacher when

I enter student teaching and will take a lot of what I learned in practicum and apply
those ideas and tips to student teaching. The main thing I have to remember is to

relax and be myself. I tend to get caught up in the lesson and if it will go as planned

instead of focusing on being comfortable and letting my personality come through.

This will come from experience but I know if I can relax, my teaching will improve

and I will be able you have fun with it and go with the flow. I also will try and remind

myself to ask questions and to never feel like a nuisance to my mentor teacher. At

first, I tried to never ask questions and was very careful to never get in my teachers

way, however, she was more than happy to help and by the end of practicum I

became much more comfortable with her and we ended up team teaching some of

our lessons.

The most positive thing about this experience was getting to know the

students and feeling like a part of their classroom. Because I was there so much, I

was able to build relationships and teach the students who needed extra support.

A negative aspect of my experience was seeing students who live in poverty

and come from heartbreaking situations. On the very first day of my practicum, the

students were having a discussion about problems they faced in their lives. Many

kids said homework or that they never had enough time to play every sport they

wanted to play, etc. One student however, raised his hand and said we do not have

water this week but mom and dad are working on getting it back. This child was

very matter of fact and no one batted an eye. I could not show my shock at the time

but was devastated that this child one, did not have running water, and two felt

comfortable enough to share it with his peers. This and many other examples of

children who lived in poverty broke my heart and made me realize the harsh
realities of this world. My mentor teacher taught me to have a big heart for these

kids, even on the days where they tested your patience, other issues were always

going on outside the safety of the classroom.

Practicum truly was the greatest learning experience I have had thus far my

in education career. I found myself feeling the most at home in the classroom

teaching, learning, and laughing with a bunch of 7th graders.