So, there were some very interesting things that went on yesterday in the fourth grade classroom. First of all, I started working there for field experience last week. It began with the typical things of reading stations. I helped a student who we'll call Randy when I could see that he was not working on his work that he was supposed to be doing.
After the first station, I switched from the worksheet station (which is where I was at) to the silent reading station. I helped another kid whom we'll call Andy with his fluency skills. I don't feel that I am very good at teaching reading, so he was reading to me, and I was following along in his book. And I noticed that he was skipping over the word "Indianapolis." So, I stopped him once he was done with the page and I tried to help break down the word Indianapolis. I first covered up the polis so that Indiana was showing. After five minutes of having no idea of how to help him get this word, I told him what the word was and he told me "you should have said 'sounds like Minneapolis.'" I had not even thought about this, so again, the students are much smarter than me and they prove it every day.
After helping Andy, I helped a girl named Paige. She was reading a book about crocodiles, and I would pick the book up after she was done reading a page and quiz her on her comprehension. I also gave her two questions that were not in the book. The first question that I asked was "what is prey?" At this point, the group that was reading with the teacher had finished their book, so they went over to the TV and turned it on to watch the movie of the book. The other two groups were told to just keep working while the TV was playing. So, I asked again "what is prey?" and Paige looked at me and said, "Prey is an animal..." and then her attention was brought towards the TV, and this happened a few times. So, finally, I said, "You are correct that prey is an animal." And so she looked at me and said, "Prey is an animal..." and again her attention was drawn back to the movie. I then read her the sentence with the word Prey in it and she said, "Oh, prey is the enemy who the crocodile eats." I congratulated her and said that that was not even in the book. She began to beam.
The other out of the book question that I asked was "What is a territory?" This is a very interesting story, at least to me it is. Her answer to my question was, "Territory is when people come on to your territory." I was a little taken aback, so I asked again, "What is a territory?" And she looked at me as if I was crazy and said again "A territory is when people come on to your territory." At this point, I realized that she didn't realize that she was using the word that I had asked her to define as the definition. So, I told her what I was hearing. "Okay, Paige, I am hearing this, that the definition of a territory is a territory." After that, she said, "Oh, a territory is a piece of land that you own." The fourth grade brain is so fascinating, and yet I think a lot of adults use this as well. And again, I congratulated her on getting the answer right when it wasn't even in the book. She was full-blown beaming now. The reason that I did this was that the answer was not there, and I feel that she has been taught up until now that she is stupid in regards to reading. I know what that feels like, so if I get an answer correct where the answer was not even in the book, I feel really good.
Then, I went to the back table to help some students with their worksheets while the movie was still playing. We didn't get much done, because the movie was really distracting them and it was even distracting me a little bit. About five minutes after I sat down at the table, the teacher calls from over her desk that I need to teach these students how to use a dictionary, because they don't know how to. She said that in front of the whole class to me. I feel that it would have been much more appropriate to come over to me or ask me to come over to her and say quietly what she would like me to work with the students on.
After reading time (which lasted about an hour and fifteen minutes), the teacher told everyone to clean off their desks. Randy and another student still had things on the top of their desks. Randy started showing signs of a blowup, he was starting to throw his stuff into his desk with force. The teacher told me to take Randy down to the office and then back in order to give him a body break. As we were walking, Randy was muttering about how much he hated the teacher. After about a minute of complaining about the teacher, he said "She doesn't even like us, I mean I can feel that she doesn't like us, and all of us can. But you, you we like, you I like, because you like us, and you show it to us and are real about liking us. We all like you." I was a bit blown away by this statement, mainly because of its contrasting nonverbal language, which was smacking the wall the whole way down to the office and then he got some water. After that, we walked back to the classroom, and he kept hitting the wall. I asked him, "Just out of curiosity, why do you keep hitting the wall?" He answered, "Because it feels good."
I feel that I did my best yesterday, but I don't know what to do when the teacher does something like put in a movie and tell the other students to keep working. I could barely concentrate and I am a 20 year old, they are only 9 years old, how are they supposed to focus when their classmates are watching a movie? But I did the best I could given the circumstances.
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