Residency 1-Whittier Elementary School-Jane Swatosh (6 hrs)
This Monday was my first day at Whittier Elementary School. We started class with circle time, where I introduced myself to the class and they asked me questions about myself, about art, and about MCAD. They were super-excited to know that we would be doing an art project later in the semester.
After circle time we worked on editing some written work they had been doing. I worked with one group . They were happy to share their writing with me. Both students were fairly motivated and focused on the work, and noticed errors in the writing as they read it out loud. I was there to support them and help them edit, one sentence at a time. In math, they had just started a unit on geometry and today revised previously learned terminology. They did a couple interactive activities with Ms. Swatosh where they sorted shapes based on particular attributes.The class was very interactive and did not hesitate to answer questions. However, today they seemed slightly distracted. Ms. Swatosh mentioned that when the work gets a little challenging, that is when they tend to get distracted. This made a lot of sense to me. Ms. Swatosh did not raise her voice or shout at the children when they were distracted, she quieted down herself which helped to quiet the rest of the class.
I wonder what are ways to keep children engaged so that they are not involved in side conversations.
I walked around the class and talked to them about what they were working on. They had a lot of questions for me, what languages could I speak, how come I had a different accent, I was happy to share.
On Friday I visited Whittier again. As I reached in the morning, I began by helping Ms. Swatosh with prep work for an activity to be done in the following week. The class began today with ‘choice time’, which meant that as the children came to class, they could do/play any activity/game they wanted to, as long as their daily journal entries were completed. (Journal entries are usually 6-7 sentences answering a particular question.) We had a brief circle time after ‘choice time’ where they got to ask me a couple more questions about myself to get to know me better. We dived straight into literature work after circle time. I worked individually with one student and helped her sort her research material on the Boston Tea Party into different paragraphs. I helped her develop a topic sentence and sequence the writing into different paragraphs.
In math, we built three dimensional geometric shapes out of paper from nets provided. This was really exciting. Many of the students had learned my name today and did not hesitate to call out to me for help. Some got tired after a while, as the cutting and gluing was quite intricate. I found that at this point, talking to them for a few seconds and empathizing with their tiredness, encouraged them to carry on. Over this week I also noticed that the activities they were doing engaged various skills. Literature activities built their skills in writing, reading, researching, and collaborating. Math activities, required them to exercise their motor skills, and gave them a visual understanding of spatial objects.
Already, on my second day at Whittier, the children were more comfortable having me around, and so they were more open with me, and I was more open with them. One girl even looked up the meaning of my name, and came to show me what she had found. A small, but heartwarming gesture, and a wonderful way to start my day.
