Field Experience: Personal Narrative

Part One: I come from a very small town outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma. My graduating class was close to one hundred kids. My town was very rural. We only had one stoplight up until this past year. I knew in second grade that I wanted to be a teacher. I occasionally would stray and look at other jobs, but I always came back to teaching. My mom is a high school Spanish teacher so I spent more time at the school than the normal kid. Most children would hate that. I, however, loved it. I would spend hours faking teaching a classroom or roaming the halls talking to other teachers. I believe that with the lifestyle I had, I was very much prepared for teaching, and this field experience in particular. I have spent the past couple weeks observing Small …show more content…
Gates. On my first day she had an activity known as an anticipatory set that used the students ' prior knowledge. Some students felt odd about not being able to use their books to answer the questions on the worksheet. It took Mrs. Gates telling them that this is a participation grade, so what they get wrong would not be counted off. She just wanted to know what they knew before learning it in class. This helped them understand and prompted them to start on the assignment. When dealing with individual differences in cognition, Mrs. Gates used the "pull out" program. She would take the child who is farthest behind and stick them with me. That way they would get the attention they needed, while she was still able to give proper attention to the rest of the class. Another use of cognitive learning was when students were unable to grasp certain concepts she would show an informational video. These further improved the students conceptual knowledge of the information being taught to …show more content…
Gates used many of Kounin 's management skills. By taking advantage of withitness, she was able to monitor her classroom and the students knew that she was, no matter what was going on. For one example, she had a visitor come in to ask her a question during one class period. The class started to talk amongst themselves. Mrs. Gates quickly turned toward the class and made eye contact with the communicating students. They immediately quieted. By doing this she showed that even if she wasn 't focusing on the students, she knew when they weren 't doing what they were supposed to. She was always maintaining the smoothness and momentum of the class. This is very difficult to do in a middle school class. Many times students would take a question or comment and run with it. One example, the class was discussing what goes on inside of Earth and somehow the subject of conversation ended up being John Cena. Mrs. Gates was quick at shutting it down and switching the talk back to the Earth 's core. Another of Kounin 's management skills Mrs. Gates used properly was maintaining transitions. Mrs. Gates told me on my first day observing that free time will ruin a class. Knowing this she always has a transition period planned after all activities. The students have also picked up on many of the transitions and are prepared for the event. In particular, after writing the bell ringer the transition to the next activity is putting up the binders and picking up