Blog entry #3

1. To make her students feel loved and safe, Mrs. Wilcox makes sure that when students are acting out that they get time to themselves but that they also have a discussion with the teacher about why they are acting this way.  Instead of fully focusing on what was wrong Mrs. Wilcox supports validating the kids and what could be upsetting them that day.  Then we go over what ways could be better in dealing with our feelings and identifying them.  Many times we find out something has happened at home or with a friend that has upset the student and made it hard to focus for them.  By venting to the teacher and identifying the feeling they build a relationship and trust with you, they also increase their emotional intelligence.
2. Mrs. Wilcox recognizes students' individual skills by giving them a chance to share them.  She often hands them the mic for the classroom so they can demonstrate the skill they are working on.  For instance, we sing the ABC song every day in the afternoon.  During this time when Mrs. Wilcox spots a child singing and following along fairly accurately, she lets them use the microphone to help lead the class.  They can also lead the class in dance moves while they do it.  It makes them feel important and I've seen every kid go up at one time or another when they are doing particularly well that day or they are at least putting in some good effort.
3.  A clear routine that is set up amongst all the kindergarten classrooms as well as Mrs Wilcox's room is lining up.  Later in the afternoon the teachers divide their kids up amongst each other based on what skill the child is working on.  Despite being in a mixed up group of all classes the children always know where they line up, what is expected and which assistant they wait for to come pick up their line to take them back to class.  I assume they have this so well down because for the first week they focused on practicing classroom behaviors and where they should go when in groups.  This was rehearsed many times and much praise was given to "friends who followed directions".

Blog Entry #2

Service Learning Experience in Learning Strategies:

Mrs.  Wilcox, the teacher I am observing seems to use the theory of Constructivism the most.  She is a Kindergarten teacher at Franklin Elementary school in Provo.  I've seen many examples of her using active student learning to teach a concept.  For instance, they are learning their ABC's and at the beginning of the day she has them sing a long to a song to teach them the letters and the sounds.  At the end of the day, she has them do a dance to the ABC's with various different actions to help them remember.  Each child apparently came up with an action for the letters on the first day of school. Today she also implemented visual learning and/or language learning skills in that she counted their numbers from 1 to 5 with them while moving pictures and having one or two volunteers come up to move the pictures as well while they counted.

Mrs. Wilcox addresses the learning development and different learning strategies in her class by having centers.  By implementing centers she is teaching the same concept but with many different activities that engage her students in different ways.  For example, she has them go on a hunt for different letters around the classroom in one center.  In another center she had them building these letters with blocks, magnets, or drawing the letters with paint.  Lastly in a final center, she had them reading the letters to a teacher and then sorting them underneath pictures that started with the same letter.  She also makes her above mentioned Constructivism interactive, but not too complicated for the students to grasp at their age and with their attention span.

I think she does a very good job varying her ways of instruction and I found that the kids respond to it as well.  One student who really struggled in one center did astonishingly well in the next.  It was a perfect real life example of different learning styles taking effect.