Candice Seawright Teaching Language Arts to Children Dr. Li April 18, 2014 Overall Reflection I certainly enjoyed Mrs.

Berry 5th grade English Language Arts class this semester. I was very much excited to go into this classroom all this semester because English Language Arts is my cognate. I enjoy reading, writing and grammar especially when I get to provide any assistance in the classroom to help students. During my whole observation I found myself improving in areas that I was struggling with as a child and now. I also improved in areas that I thought I have mastered. As we all know, teaching is an ongoing experience and even those who have been teaching for years, can always improve their teaching strategies. Working with Mrs. Berry has been an exciting experience. She always finds a way to keep her students entertained and interactive. She is honestly a great role model for me because I do want to be an elementary English teacher. Hopefully I will be able to follow in her footsteps in my future classroom. Before I entered into Brookdale Elementary School to go into Mrs. Berrys classroom, a few of my peers told me that she was a great teacher and she really does a great job with her students. So I knew I was going into a classroom with the best leadership, the best strategies and the best skills to help the students succeed. As I entered the classroom, I saw everything I thought that I would. There were different examples on the wall throughout the classroom to help students as they work. There was also an English word wall for students to refer to as they

learned terms each content standard. Out of everything, I enjoyed the way Mr. Berry taught and the way she varied her objectives to meet the needs of each of his students. She would take the time out to give one-on-one guidance to any of the students who may have needed it. There is a desk in the back of the classroom where she would conduct these meetings. This usually took place early in the morning when students are doing their accelerated reading or during their related arts period. She would tell the students if they were not at C average then they would have to use their recess or related arts period for tutoring, one-one-one help or to get caught up with their work. This actually motivated students to get their work done because they did not want to miss a related arts period or their recess, so they would do every thing they could to keep above a C average in Mrs. Berrys class. I had the opportunity to observe Mrs. Berry teach a lesson on well written and clear full body paragraphs. Mrs. Berry started off the lesson with telling the students that they would have to think about a topic they would like to write about. The class all agreed upon the topic, Why am I Lucky? After agreeing on a topic to write about Mrs. Berry told the class that before they jump into writing their essays, they must list the reason why they fill that they are lucky. She told them to write down three reasons why they feel lucky and then make a list under those three reasons to help them along the way while they are writing. She walked around the classroom to see every students reason for why they felt they are lucky. Next the class began working on the introduction portion to the essay. When she first began with how to write an introduction that is acceptable for the PASS test. She told the students to start off with a hook. This is either a question or a statement to grab the readers attention while they are grading the test. Mrs. Berry gave her students twenty to thirty minutes to come up with their introduction alone. She did not want to interfere with them coming up with the introduction on their own. After the twenty

minutes was up, I had the chance and opportunity to help each student with revising and editing their introduction. Mrs. Berry and I helped the students for about twenty minutes before wrapping up the lesson. Next, Mrs. Berry told the students that for homework they would have to complete paragraph two and three. This should have been easier for them to do than the introduction since they already had an outline of their essay. The students also had to make sure they included transition words and figurative language. Just this one lesson alone showed me that Mrs. Berry only wanted the best for her students and she allowed them to be as creative as they wanted to, as long as they stayed on the topic at hand. During this time, I was assigned to present a lesson to Mrs. Berrys class and have it video taped. I took the time to review my lesson, I noticed a lot of my strengths, weaknesses and of lessons learned while presenting. During my lesson, students were to get a definite understanding of what an idiom was, the literal meaning of different examples provided and had the chance to create their own idiom. Strength of my lesson would be my anticipatory set. During this students were able to get out of their seats and stand by the different idioms I had around the room and tell what they believe was the meaning of the idiom. They really enjoyed this because they were able to be interactive and voice their opinion. Another strength of my lesson was the creative aspect of the lesson. Students had to create their own idiom or draw one they may have heard that day. They were very much creative when they got to this section of the lesson. All the students were eager to share their own illustration of the idiom they chose. A weakness during my lesson would not be the actual lesson itself, but my presentation of the lesson. I tended to stay in one spot during the lesson. Thus making it seem as though I was teaching to one side of the class instead of the whole entire classroom. Next time, I will make sure that I am moving around the room a lot more instead of just standing in one spot. As far as lessons learned, I would say

that I have a tendency to stay in the same place and become very repetitive with my feedback to the students who have answered correctly. Mrs. Berry told me after my lesson, that I should walk around the classroom a lot more so that I can keep the attention of my students. She said that students have a tendency to day dream and lose focus much faster than an adult, so if you are just teaching them in one spot, they are going to get bored with looking at that particular spot and turn their attention somewhere else and not be focused. Mrs. Berry also mentioned I need to change up the way I present my good feedback towards my students. I can become very repetitive when teaching. I always say, Good Job. I could use more adjectives such as Awesome or Right on or even a high five. Once you say something over and over again, it starts to lose its value and students will not try to do the best job they really could when it comes to the lesson content. So moving forward, I will know what to do and what not to do when teaching a lesson. Overall, I enjoyed working with Mrs. Berry 5th grade English class because it gave me a little more confidence in actually going into a math classroom and teaching. As I mentioned, English Language Arts is my cognate area. In my future classroom, I will incorporate everything I have learned by observing Mrs. Berrys class and from what she has told me to do. A big part of my classroom will be reading and having students love to read. Most students do not like to read because they have not had the opportunity to read a good book. That is my job, to show them how great reading can be. I want my students to be successful in the classroom, but I will have to make the effort necessary to do.