Max Crimp EDUC 302-303 Prof.

Terpstra School Context Legacy Christian School is a private Christian school located on the South side of Grand Rapids. The school is split up into two campuses. One campus is for Kindergarten through 4th grade, while the other campus is for 5th grade through 8th grade. The campus I am placed in is the Kindergarten through 4th grade campus. The school building that this campus is located in is in good shape, with no major visible flaws. The students have ample room for activities and learning, and no classroom appears too full or overcrowded. The students have access to a gym and a computer lab. However, Legacy Christian does not have a cafeteria, so children are forced to eat their snacks and lunch in the classroom. I wonder how this affects children with allergies to certain foods. The surrounding neighborhood is lower-to-middle-class. About 100 yards behind the school, there is a trailer park. Since the school is a private school, I wonder how many students, if any at all, come from the surrounding neighborhood or the trailer park. A few minutes down the road in either direction brings you to a variety of different establishments. There is Cutler Memorial Park, which could provide students with an alternative area to learn about subjects such as Science. In the other direction are a Hospital, Church, and a Library. These are three more possible alternative learning environments that I could possibly access for the students.

In the class itself, there are nineteen students, thirteen of which are boys. Only two of the students in the class, both of whom happen to be boys, are nonWhite. They are both adopted from Guatemala. This dynamic is consistent with the rest of the school. Of the 370 students that attend the school, 354 are White (NCES). Since the lesson topic I am teaching is the major components of a story, I do not think that race or cultural differences will factor into my teaching. The classroom I am teaching does not have any students with any major physical or mental disabilities. Some of the students are slower at learning some subjects than others, but none struggle enough to be considered a student with a learning disability. All of the students are proficient in English, even the two boys who were adopted from Guatemala. There are four students who struggled with the concepts of writing a short story earlier in the year. I will need to make sure that these four students do not get behind during this unit. I will have help from their regular teacher, so if either Mrs. Jones (pseudonym) or I need to spend some extra time with those particular students, we will have the ability to do that. The students will have previously learned about some story structure due to a unit earlier in the year when the students were asked to write a story of their own modeled off of a story that the class had read. I will be building off of the students previous knowledge in order to more effectively write a story and be able to identify the components of what makes up a story. I will continue to expand their knowledge on the topic by showing them many examples of different themes, settings, characters, and the conflicts and/or resolutions. My goal by the end of this unit is for the students to write their own stories that contain all of the necessary components.

(n.d.). Retrieved February 28, 2014, from http://nces.ed.gov/