Friday, November 7, 2008

Which grade?

This is me. This is me as Jackson sees me. I hate to use his real name, being the internet and all, but he wrote his names on it, so its sort of hard to hide. But for privacy's sake, you have no idea what school or country or teacher this "Jackson"person comes from, so I think we're okay. For one of my classes we had to do kindergarten assessments. We had to do a series of test/activities to see where that students was at academically to decide how to further instruct them. If you are in education, you know, that this is something you hear about a lot. Assessment. Classroom Management. Assessment. Classroom Management. It's constantly beat into your brain! So Jackson was my student for this learning experience and he was the cutest kid ever. Imagine seeing this group of kindergartners knowing that one of them was going to be assigned to you and you spot one that you instantly fall in love with and know that you want to work with that kid. That's how it was for me and Jackson. He was one of the smaller kids in the group, with super curly hair (like my brother's when he was that age) and he was wearing a cute little polo with the collar half up and half down while only part of his shirt was tucked into his little khaki shorts. Got a good mental picture? Lucky me, and he was my partner. Not to mention, this kid was really smart. He knew all his stuff, which made his report very easy to write.
So it got me thinking--I really like kindergarten. They are so young an innocent and ready to learn. You can do fun crafty things with them and nothing is ever too corny. Some people are turned off from kindergarten because they feel the students are a little too needy for their liking. I like needy. (I think) So maybe I want to teach kindergarten. It's all up in the air now, and I may change my mind a thousand times, but who knows. My next big hurdle is for my music class. We have to create an integrated lesson to teach and video tape ourselves and turn it in. How nerve racking! Oh yeah--integrated means--a lesson where you are teaching two different subjects. Or you have two different objectives, therefore they will be assessed on two different things. Like, having an instrument and having them hypothesize if they think it will sound high or low. Then when they hear the instrument, they sing a song. So you are using their SCIENCE skills to go through the steps of the scientific method and then their MUSIC skills to sing the song correctly. Make sense? Anyway, that's what I have ot do and I'm pretty nervous about it. Wish me luck!

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