General Field Experience Post

This semester, I did my field experience at Ponce de Leon Middle School, and observed various language arts classes, in all grades.

I most often observed a 6th grade language arts class, as well as an 8th grade language arts class.

What I feel I gained most from my field experience this semester (which was the first time I had observed middle school aged students), was that students can benefit a lot from cooperative learning.

In almost all the classes I had observed, the students often worked alone and the teacher didn't do much teaching.  There was a lot of class time spent with students reading by themselves or listening to an audio tape version of whatever the class was reading at the moment.  However, when the students were given the opportunity to work together, they seemed to enjoy it the most and retained the most information from the story.

Another stray observation I made while in the classroom was that there was a strong lack of classroom management.  My field experience teacher had a hard time making sure her students were doing there work, although this may be a reflection of the classwork they were doing and the fact that the students always seemed bored.  She often just threatened them with detentions and calling their parents, but never followed through with her threats.

While in the classroom, I had limited interactions with the students, which wasn't what I had wanted.  I had hoped to teach a lesson or mini lesson in the classroom, but tests and getting into the classroom late in the semester (October) led to me not being able to.  I did get to answer questions the students had and work individually with some students.

Aside from observing, I did, at least, get to grade papers and tests.

Overall, I felt it was an insightful experience, and while I mainly learned what not to do in my classroom, I have learned some things I will implement.