Service Learning Paper Service learning is a great opportunity. I was able to see such a diverse group of children in my placement. I was placed at Andrew Jackson Elementary School in a first grade classroom. Andrew Jackson, according to the Kingsport City Schools website, was constructed in 1921. The school was renovated in the early 1990’s. Andrew Jackson is a K-5 school that serves a diverse population of about six hundred students. The school is located on the western end of Kingsport. There is a broad mix of diverse students that are served in the school. The students in the first grade classroom were a mixture of needs, diversity, and socio-economic status. During my placement, I enjoyed interacting with the children immensely. They
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Calhoun to contextualize the instruction. The beginning of each class focused on a lesson on their social skills. Mrs. Calhoun would discuss with the class about being a leader. She explained what it meant and how do you show good leadership skills. Once the children went to their station, Mrs. Calhoun would look around and praise different students for showing good leadership skills. Additionally, Mrs. Calhoun stressed how important it is to help out at home and in the community. I discovered this contextualized skill as I watched and helped out in the classroom. Mrs. Calhoun did not have to ask students to help her. The students immediately jumped to help her with papers. The students also helped each other in the room without prompting. I found this so sweet. The first graders were a community of learners that worked together to complete their assignments. Furthermore, Mrs. Calhoun reinforced the idea of bring the student’s own experiences into the classroom. In the student’s writing, Mrs. Calhoun would ask them to draw out a story from the weekend. Then the student would label beginning, middle, and end scenes in their illustration. The student would write out the story. Mrs. Calhoun would review their work. She would ask them to fix their spelling and punctuation mistakes. Mrs. Calhoun would also ask them questions which encouraged the students to elaborate on the story and give more details in their …show more content…
Incorporating the student’s own experience allows students to grow and think more critically. I was able to use this when I worked one on one with students during a math lesson and a writing lesson. In the math lesson, Mrs. Calhoun introduced counting by fours. I worked with one group on an activity that was handed out earlier. I asked them questions about their own experience and background knowledge. By incorporating and activating their background knowledge, math became a concept that they could understand through real life experiences. For example, I inquired about the number of wheels on a car. The students understood that each car had four wheels. I gradually went up to multiple cars in order to find how many wheels six car would have. The students were able to understand the concept of repeated addition (multiplication) through a discussion of an object that they were familiar with easier than reading a constructed word problem and
Calhoun to contextualize the instruction. The beginning of each class focused on a lesson on their social skills. Mrs. Calhoun would discuss with the class about being a leader. She explained what it meant and how do you show good leadership skills. Once the children went to their station, Mrs. Calhoun would look around and praise different students for showing good leadership skills. Additionally, Mrs. Calhoun stressed how important it is to help out at home and in the community. I discovered this contextualized skill as I watched and helped out in the classroom. Mrs. Calhoun did not have to ask students to help her. The students immediately jumped to help her with papers. The students also helped each other in the room without prompting. I found this so sweet. The first graders were a community of learners that worked together to complete their assignments. Furthermore, Mrs. Calhoun reinforced the idea of bring the student’s own experiences into the classroom. In the student’s writing, Mrs. Calhoun would ask them to draw out a story from the weekend. Then the student would label beginning, middle, and end scenes in their illustration. The student would write out the story. Mrs. Calhoun would review their work. She would ask them to fix their spelling and punctuation mistakes. Mrs. Calhoun would also ask them questions which encouraged the students to elaborate on the story and give more details in their …show more content…
Incorporating the student’s own experience allows students to grow and think more critically. I was able to use this when I worked one on one with students during a math lesson and a writing lesson. In the math lesson, Mrs. Calhoun introduced counting by fours. I worked with one group on an activity that was handed out earlier. I asked them questions about their own experience and background knowledge. By incorporating and activating their background knowledge, math became a concept that they could understand through real life experiences. For example, I inquired about the number of wheels on a car. The students understood that each car had four wheels. I gradually went up to multiple cars in order to find how many wheels six car would have. The students were able to understand the concept of repeated addition (multiplication) through a discussion of an object that they were familiar with easier than reading a constructed word problem and