Week 1 Post-Sarah Isaacson

Hello!  My name is Sarah Isaacson and I am a junior here at IU studying elementary education.  I’ve changed my major a couple of times (elementary education, secondary math education), but now I am staying with this major because I know that I am meant to be an elementary educator.  I have wanted to be a teacher since I was about four.  My mom decided I was going to be a teacher when I was three, so I think it was a pretty definite thing that I would be educating.  I have also had quite a bit of experience with kids, so I am really looking forward to spending more time with kids, this time in a teacher role, with our field experience.  I’m pretty busy this semester.  I am subbing with the local schools.  I am also babysitting and tutoring math, so it will be an eventful semester!  I’m excited to learn a variety of learning theories this semester in this class and see how I can apply them to my teaching so I can be as helpful to my students as possible!

Now, onto my model for teaching…

For this first model, I was thinking about how I learned best in school and how the children I tutor learn best, and I built off of that.  My first image is one of a teacher lecturing off of a chalkboard (though in today’s world, it would probably be off of a Smart Board!).  This is how some teachers begin any lesson, by giving the information to the children and then see how they respond to it.  This would also be the time to scaffold for the students to show them that phonics and reading is not an intimidating activity, rather that they have already begun by writing their names and learning to read their peers’ names.  During the lecture portion, the teacher would model what they would want the students to do.  My next image is one of students in a pod working together on an assignment.  For simplicity, let’s say that it is a phonics worksheet.  This is not an individual assignment, rather a way for the students to communicate together to see how to complete the worksheet.  I believe that children can learn so much from each other, and they sometimes can learn more than from a teacher because they are able to discuss different possibilities and different words that they know sound a certain way.  This will also help their communication skills improve, which is always important for young children.  The next image is of a teacher helping a student.  As the students work collaboratively, the teacher would be walking around, making sure that the students understand the concept that the teacher was trying to convey during the lecture portion.  This will reinforce the correct understanding of the lesson, and if there are some students who are still struggling, the teacher will be able to step in a help the student understand and try to explain it in a different way to make it more concrete.  The last image is showing individual work, showing that the students understand the concept and feel comfortable doing the work by themselves without any assistance from their peers or teacher. 

This kind of learning was very commonly used when I was a student and when I cadet taught a second grade class my senior year of high school: model, work in groups, teacher reinforcement, and individual work.  I also saw something similar to this when I observed a reading camp this summer using the “Daily Five” approach.  All of the teachers that I talked with that morning raved about that teacher approach.   

I posted this on the blog on oncourse as well, but I wanted to make sure that I had it in both places!