Personal Narrative: My Observation Of Valley View Elementary School

I did my observation in Mrs. Cameron’s kindergarten class at Valley View Elementary School. I went over spring break, so I stayed for three days in the classroom and got to experience what it is like throughout the whole day. Mrs. Cameron’s classroom had five tables for the students to sit and a rocking chair at the front for herself; although, she hardly ever sat. Mrs. Cameron did not have a teacher’s desk, but instead she had a chair at one of the tables with the students. There were posters on the wall that together made the alphabet, and others which displayed vocabulary words. Walking into the class, I felt it was a welcoming learning environment. The students bombarded me upon my first arrival with many questions about who I was and …show more content…
Cameron starts out the morning with a reading program called Open Court. During my time of visit, the kindergartners were working on learning the vowels. Mrs. Cameron is super energetic and always tries to make learning fun for the kids. She made up a jingle for them to remember that a vowel says its name in a word if followed by a “magic e.” The students love the song, and I would hear them singing it throughout the whole day. When the kindergarteners are introduced to a new sight word, Mrs. Cameron gets the kids pumped up to learn the new word. Then they all dance and sing out the spelling of the word. Mrs. Cameron also incorporates games into learning, such as one I spy game where she says something like, “I am looking for a word that has two vowels.” Then a student will point it out on the vocabulary board. Considering that the students are kindergartners, they have very limited attention spans. Mrs. Cameron acknowledges this by giving them breaks to do jumping jacks, or by doing a dance from a video from a website called Go …show more content…
Cameron’s instruction was always oriented to the whole class. She did not have favorites or show special attention to only certain students. She even had kids of other teachers and children from her church in her class, yet these students were treated the same as the rest. If a student was bad he/she would move their name clip to a different spot on the board. Depending on how many times they moved, certain amount of recess was lost. If students did good on reading quizzes they were rewarded with a prize box toy, and the student who listens the best at the end of the day gets to choose a big