My Field Experience

I learned some great lessons throughout my field experience. Mrs.Eichten was so helpful and encouraging. I appreciate that she gave me the chance to get involved in the classroom and help out the students. She introduced some things  to me that I thought worked really great in her classroom.

1.) For reading the students did what was called "Daily Five." The purpose of the daily five is to build stamina and teach students to work independently while the teacher works with one of the three reading groups. She works with each group for about 30 min, she tried to place them in groups based on reading ability, this way she can give each group appropriate material based on where there reading level is at. The daily five- or what the students can pick from while the teacher is working with a group include:
*read to yourself  *read to someone  *work on writing  *listen to reading  *spelling/word work
Mrs. Eichten said you only want to introduce one daily five at a time so for the first month she just introduced read to yourself. The goal is to get them to be busy reading the entire time without having to be told to do so by the teacher. She said at the beginning the students would only last a couple of minutes, and then she would ring the bell and they would all have to go back to their seats. She wouldn't pick out anyone specifically but she would say would they were doing wrong and the kids would have to demonstrate how to do it the right way. She said after a few months she was amazed with how long they could work independently. For my field experience they did great with this, they knew exactly what they were supposed to be doing, this gives the teacher a great chance to work with a smaller group and in the end I think they all benefit from this.

2.) The teacher also used an award system. She would give out tickets when she would see someone doing something that they were supposed to. She also had reading goals, they were supposed to read at least 60 min every week. Everyday before class they would bring their folder in and if they read last night there parents would sign a calendar they had in their folder and they would get a ticket. She would aslo make them give back tickets if they were misbehaving or not listening. This really seemed to work because no one wanted to give a ticket back!! She had two prize boxes one for 50 tickets and one for 100 tickets, so they got to choose which box they wanted to pick from- obviously the 100 box had better prizes. I noticed that Mrs.Eichten didn't take away tickets as much as she would give them out, she told me this was because it's so important to point out what the child is doing right and make them feel good. This also helps encourage kids to behave properly