The Importance Of Children In The Classroom

Today in the classroom, the children were “reviewing” their place holders and labeling the values, however, Ms. D and the other teachers in the room had to continue to reiterate the rules. They quickly began to back up the lesson and go more in-depth in their explanations. Ms. J used the Smart Board to put problems on the board for the children. Then Ms. D, myself, Ms. Jones, and two other aides would walk around and check that the children had done the problem correctly. Each child had a dry erase maker and a cut strip of a beach towel. The children were instructed to write out the number from the Smart Board and label each place value. When a child would get the correct answer, an adult would put a check in the top right hand corner of their …show more content…
The tickets were handed out to students that were paying attention and getting correct answers. For example, one little boy (A) was struggling with place holders, so he received a ticket when he did a problem all by himself and read it aloud to the class. Ms. D whispered that the tickets were used as positive reinforcement which helped to encourage good behavior, thus hoping that the bad behavior would not appear leaving punishment out of the picture. The children soon were refocused and everyone was soon in full out competition mode. There was one girl (M) that was not getting checks and would look over at other people’s desks to see their answers. Noticing this, I asked one of the aides about M, and was told that she struggles in math, so I went to help …show more content…
At the end of the lesson (around 10:20), all the tickets (which the children had written their names on) were put into the “Be Happy Jar”. Ms. D and Ms. J decided that they would pick three names today since everyone had done so well the entire math time (which had run more than 20 minutes over). As Ms. D reached in for the first name there were mixed facial expressions on the children. Some were sitting their silently waiting, while others were crossing their fingers or whispering their hopes of winning. After the name was drawn, Ms. J had everyone stand up. She proceeded to describe the winner with one attribute, such as “the winner has on pink”, “all the girls sit down”, “anyone with black shoes on sit down”, or “if you have a sports shirt on sit down”. Anyone who did not fit that description was eliminated and had to sit down. At the end, the only child standing got to pick a prize out of the tub. This repeated itself two more times and the children had big smiles on their