Community Outreach

In order to fulfill a community outreach requirement for my Education 260 class, I participated in the NAEYC Week of the Young Child that took place at the OARDC in Wooster.

At this event I was able to walk around the area and experience the activities that were set up by the area preschools. I think that this experience was great because I was able to observe, and even participate in, many different activities that I could incorporate into the classroom. I was able to see children painting with household items, experiencing several different sensory activities with bowls of grains and beans, and blowing bubbles, to name a few. I think that the two most interesting experiences I had were when I was able to touch and play with “fake snow” and when I was able to look through a fun recipe book. The fake snow was used in a sensory table much like sand, but was a lot easier to clean up. This white stuff actually felt like the real thing, it was amazing and the kids seemed to love it. The recipe book contained pictures and recipes so that parents or teachers could make “fun” snacks for their children. There were all kinds of ways that people had thought to manipulate food in order to makes faces or animal bodies. I hope that I will be able to find a book like this again and use some of the ideas it presented.

The other half of this experience involved me sitting at an area where children came up us and experimented with playing musical instruments. I think that this was a lot of fun because in addition to the individualized time I was spending with children, I was also able to meet and interact with several parents. Overall, I think this was a very worthwhile experience.

I believe that experiences such as these allow teachers, parents, students, and community members to engage in meaningful interactions. While the students may not necessarily gain anything from visiting this type of site for an hour, I believe the connections that are made between the other constituencies present will be able to carry over for weeks and years in the future.

Week 8

I find it hard to believe that my field experience is over. The weather this week was again nice and we spent a lot of time outdoors. The children seemed to again to enjoy their time outside running and playing.
Within the classroom, I wrapped up my experience with a small group lesson on outer space. They had been learning about different planets everyday, and I helped expand their knowledge of the planet Mercury. I worked with about one or two children at a time. During this lesson, we covered a small circle with glue and sprinkled dust onto this tiny planet. We discussed the “warm” and “cold” sides of the planet and how these temperatures vary with night and day. We also talked about how the planet has craters, much like the moon, and is covered in dust. In addition to learning about Mercury, we made a space scene where we used vocabulary words, such as rocket ship and astronaut. We added these pictures to our dark sky and were able to add stars of different colors, such as red, blue, brown, yellow, and white. We also reviewed which start were “warm” and which were “cold.” I think that this lesson went well and the children seemed to enjoy it. The children did a very good job remembering the differences between the stars.

Field: 7 hours
Support: 1 hour

Week 7

This week my teacher was back, and I was able to get back into a normal routine. Since the weather was so nice out this week we were able to play outside on the playground while we waited for the busses. I enjoyed this time with the children away from the boundaries of the traditional classroom. One thing that I observed and need to keep in mind is that the outside is not necessarily as “child proof” as your classroom, and there are all kinds of new things that children can get in to. We have several children who love to put things in their mouths. While we discourage this inside the classroom, generally the items they place in thier mouths are fairly safe. The items outside (rubber pieces from the playground) are not as safe for the children.
I was also able to lead a small group activity this week. I worked with two or three students at a time and we created patterns with pond animal cards I had prepared. This activity worked better with some groups than it did for others. I had several students that were very distracted, which caused those lessons to be less successful. I started the activity by going over what animal each picture represented (duck, dragonfly, beaver, fish, frog, and turtle) with the students. They had learned these animals earlier in the week. I then created a pattern with the students and we repeated the characters out loud (ex: duck, frog, duck frog). We then thought about what would come next. Finally, the students were able to make their own pattern. The non-verbal students who participated in this activity were able to point to the cards to make their choices known. This is an activity that I definately see myself repeating, and can be done with any classroom theme.

Field Hours: 7
Support Hours: 2

Weeks 4-6

Over Spring Break, I was able to visit the preschool in the morning, when actual lessons were being taught, as opposed to the afternoon classes that I normally visit. This was beneficial to me for several reasons. Firstly, I was able to see the students awake and fully ready to learn, which is so different from the sleepy preschoolers I am used to working with. Secondly, I was able to observe their classroom teacher through circle time and daily lessons. In addition to daily lessons by the classroom teacher, the M-W-F class had gym, music, and group speech each once a week. The T-Th class also had group speech once a week. I think that being able to witness this allowed me to think about planning in the classroom more than I ever had before. Most of the classrooms that I have been in during my field experiences at The College of Wooster have not had “specials” while I was visiting their rooms. This was a new and valuable experience for me not only in the planning aspect, but also in seeing how the students react to different teachers in the building.

During the time I was in field for the mornings, I was able to teach two lessons. The first was about Easter Eggs and the letter E, while the second was a lesson on graphing where we we graphed the classes favorite colors of the rainbow. I have attached both lesson plans to this entry in order to further explain these lessons. Below are two pictures in order to offer a visual representation of the work that I completed with my students.

Easter Egg Lesson Plan

Graphing Our Favorite Colors Lesson Plan

Through both of these lessons, I was able to use some sign language with the students that I had learned through watching my cooperating teacher. The signs we used were for the letter “E” and for the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. This is something I have never done before and I think added greatly to my lesson. Some children in the class are entirely non-verbal and while they usually do not use signs to communicate, they are being taught them in hopes that they will develop these skills.

Since we have been back from break, I have had one additional week in the field classroom. Things are back to the usual schedule now, where I visit the class during nap time, I help the students with puzzles and any unfinished morning work, prepare supplies for my cooperating teacher, and help the students get ready to go home. This week, we had a substitute in the class, because our classroom teacher was away for the week. Again, this was a new experience for me. It was interesting to see how the students reacted to a new teacher in the room. Although I had met this substitute before, I could tell that the students were trying to get away with more than is normally permissible. The teacher did not seem phased by this behavior, and kept the children in line, but because of the relaxed nature of our afternoons, they were still clearly acting out. I think that it is a valuable experience in that I have seen how students act with substitutes, in case I ever find myself in that situation.

On a different note, I’ll be teaching lessons again next week, I’m excited.

Field Hours: 25

Support Hours: 3

SMARTboard lesson

Sara Warden and I partnered to teach a lesson on the Digestive System using the SMART interactive whiteboard.

Digestive System Lesson Plan

The Digestive System