My First Fieldwork

This week I was able to volunteer for two classrooms. The first class I observed on 9/3/13 for about 2 hours in a resource room. I'm observing this particular class for my Exceptional Students fieldwork assignment which focuses on how we can better help children with special needs. In this classroom I mainly observed children practicing place value in math. The teacher made sure to go at an appropriate pace so each child could understand and had the correct answer before continuing. Some of them struggled, but the teacher made sure they were comfortable and had the help they needed.

Today I volunteered for two and a half hours in a 3rd grade classroom. The teacher had the children sit on the blue carpet to learn about writing a story. As the children learned I was surprised  how respectful and ready they seemed to listen. Some of the children had a hard time sitting still, others were just fine. I think that connects to the learning model. The auditory kids were probably able to sit and listen easier because that's how they learn. The kinesthetic learners I'm sure had a harder time sitting through because they learn better through acting, seeing, or doing. The teacher allowed the children to go to their desks and practice their new skills. As they did, the teacher walked around and made sure to address every child question with their hand raised for help. After this I was assigned to help pass out snacks to all the children. Every day the school brings a fruit for the children to try for snack, which I think is a great idea. The fruit the children were exposed to today was a cross between a plum and an apple.
After the early bird children left for the day, the remaining children listened to a story with the teacher then were assigned to their desks to practiced finding and sounding out vowel sounds in their books. I walked around and helped the children find different vowels. I helped a couple students with that, then went on to listening them read to me. Many of them varied in their abilities to read. I walked around and helped the children with whatever level they were at and helped a few sound out words. Others were very good at reading and pronouncing words themselves.
At the end of the day, I found that the children were really happy to have me help them. They enjoyed reading to me and were excited when I helped them find correct answers. One of the children told me that I was his best adult friend. It made me feel good to help them and enjoyed knowing that they liked having me in the classroom.