Field Experience Day 14 - April 6th 2012

Reflection Of Lesson:

Leaves can be fun, but they are not really appropriate for school days

We remained outside today with the other pre-k class. I have never been involved in this class before so I had a bit more difficulty learning about the students. It was interesting to see the similarities between the students though. Even though this is a whole other group of students, they all seem to want to do dangerous things and get as dirty as possible.

Being a helper in this class, it would be most beneficial to speak with the teacher before hand to ask about the procedures. These would include rules of the equipment, where they can and cannot go and specific procedures for entering and exiting the fenced in area. There was a group of children playing in leaves in one of the corner, they were throwing them all over themselves. I saw it from across the space and as soon as I spotted it, so did the host teacher and immediately put a stop to it. There were also children playing in the dirt. I do believe that it is good for children to play outside and get dirty, etc. but not in the middle of a school day. I'm sure their parents would be very displeased.

I was also playing with a group of 4 girls and it was so sad to see 3 of them turn to the 4th and tell her that they did not want to play with her anymore. These are pre-k students and they are already leaving people out. I have not seen such bluntness in a while though. I suppose it is the honesty of being a child. I did not say anything to the girls but now I wish I had said something about including classmates. I found this article about how bullying can being in young children, so we, as teachers, need to be on the lookout.  Instead I spoke to the girls about how it is not good to pretend you are hurt if you are not (they were all holding their ankles and saying "ow ow ow") because it can cause people to be worried and then very angry if there is no emergency. I hope that they thought about it for at least a little while after that.