Future 4th Grade Teacher

Throughout much of college and this program I have known I wanted to teach elementary school, but not until this semester have I truly seen the grade I wanted to teach. I worked in a 1^st grade classroom last semester, and while I fell in love with my sweet 1^st graders, I wasn’t 100% happy with the content taught, the levels of dependence and the repetitive practice with simple rules and procedures.

So this semester I decided to give 4^th grade a try, and I love it! I love it that my children can carry on adult conversations with me and also understand sarcasm and humor. I also love their level of independence, even thought I am working with the lower class with many special education students they still are competent little mini adults that can micro manage their own areas and don’t have to constantly be redirected and reminded of everything. I love the content also because in 4^th grade they can do a lot more hands on things and have more challenging material to learn. Overall, I think I am lucky to have such a wonderful and sweet class, but I honestly feel like I can relate and get through more to the older groups of elementary age children. Obviously I will take any job I can get with this economy and lack of jobs, but I am still crossing my fingers to get a chance to teach the upper grades!

Chapter 12 and Field Experience

I found Chapter 12 interesting because it gave more of a focused look on what a year can look like in a writing workshop. I have always been stressed about how I am going to plan for each individual day for every subject, but this chapter focuses more on units and explains that the writing workshop should be lenient with time and vary according to student’s needs. The questions to ask yourself about planning a unit were also very beneficial to me. Knowing what the students have done in the past is extremely important because it can be built on, and if they have learned nothing then you know to start with the basics of writing workshop.

        I have been seeing more writing in my field experience lately. The other day my teacher read “My Name is Yoon” to the children and they wrote a response to reading about it. She provided sentence starters and discussed what the children should write about and I think this greatly helped them focus. They got to share today and I was amazed at some of the vocabulary and thought that some of the students put into their work. They have also been working on persuasive writing on a prompt asking whether they think Whitehead should have school uniforms. Some of the children thought of very imaginative reasons, but most of the students seemed to enjoy it because it was a topic they felt strongly about one way or the other. I look forward to continuing to see my students grow as writers and hope sometime in the future I can teach a lesson on writing with this class. They are very enthusiastic and want to share their writing which I think is so great!