Third Grade Classroom Reflection

During third grade, Children are really growing up. They have now experienced a couple years of elementary school and have learned the basic milestones of being children. My shadow took place within Mrs. Stevens’ third grade classroom. When I arrived the students were working within four different groups focused on the world-class outcome of creating meaning strategically in reading, writing, listening and speaking. The first group was working on vocabulary words that were written on cards, the second group was playing educational games on Slumdog, the third group was reading the previously learned vocabulary words within a story with the teacher, and the last group was drawing and writing out T-shirt designs for their recycle program. What …show more content…
Stevens had a fairly large classroom, up to about 24 students. She had arranged her classroom in three groups of eight student desks all facing the promethean board that had a picture of recycle designs that would help students gain ideas to their T-shirt design. To the left of the Promethean board Mrs. Stevens posted the world-class outcomes that consisted of the lessons the students would be learning along with the groups that they would be working with according to color. I really enjoyed shadowing Mrs. Stevens class she was very inspiring to a future teacher and the students were very loving and welcoming. Sense the class was working within groups and there was not a class lesson being taken on Mrs. Stevens managed to recognize the students that were behaving and on task, focused their attention back to their work and ideas, gave words of encouragement to the ones that were complaining about the vocabulary. Mrs. Stevens was able to use cognitive development within her classroom by rehearsing and allowing numerous opportunities to practice the vocabulary. She incorporated the vocabulary within the IPAD education game, the reading lesson and the T-Shirt opportunity. She also used cognitive development by organization her classroom was well organized and her students knew exactly what they needed to be doing, where they needed to do it, and how they should do it. Lastly she was very elaborate and questioned the students about the readings. Mrs. Stevens gave a …show more content…
First off a as a new teacher I want to be able to understand my grade level content and be able to teach that content in various styles, engaging my students and help them reach goals. Throughout this shadow I learned a lot about cognitive process within third grade students. Working as a nanny I get a little bit of kindergarten, third, and fourth grade but being surrounded by the same age level I really noticed the way they think and problem solve. Third graders always want to know “How” and “Why” as teachers we need to be patient and answer questions and even ask lots of questions ourselves. Third graders are becoming better readers yet we want to continue to encourage them to read out loud and with expression so it’s smooth. Lastly they develop their own opinions and we should expose students to new ideas and new things to keep their minds asking questions. I also learned a lot about metacognition within Mrs. Steven’s class. Metacognition according to Mcdevitt, “ Knowledge and beliefs about ones own cognitive process, as well as efforts to regulate those cognitive processes to maximize learning and memory.” This is confusing to think about but metacognition seriously means thinking about thinking. As a new teacher I want to guide students to become more interested in thinking by helping them understand their thinking. This shadow truthfully