Fieldwork Observation #1

Megan Wheeler

EDU 306 Dr. Maruca

Dewey Elementary School Mrs. Billingsley (Kindergarten)
October 2 12:35-3:05
October 4 12:35-2:45

In the classroom, desks are arranged in groups of five or six. There are many
reference posters around the room (for numbers, the days of the week, alphabet, class
birthdays, sight words), a class library of books, bins of supplies on each desk and a
cabinet full of thousands of toys. There is an even amount of each gender among the
students, all of them are about five or six years old, and there are 22 students total. They
do have two students from another classroom (a Transitional K/Kinder class) that join
them for math lessons and there are two special needs students who join them for motor
lab and free time. At different points in the day there are two students, Jonathan and Lily,
who are identified with special needs and who go to a pullout classroom at different
times. They also have an aide who works with them in the general education classroom.
There are two English Language Learners, Alexis, a Spanish speaker and Sayumi, whose
family speaks Japanese at home.
Mrs. Bill is calm and uses a soft tone of voice so that her students will match it.
She is a facilitator of the lesson and allows for students to answer/participate in the
concept being taught. She is loving towards students and appears very approachable to
them. Often, she will whisper her directions so that students have to be quiet to know
what to do. She models correct behavior and does not ever lose her temper.
There are definitely some distractions present in the classroom. Sometimes the
classroom door is left open and there is outside noise, such as planes flying overhead.
One of the students with special needs, Jonathan, at times will distract the other students
or act out and require the attention of his aide. Not much technology is used throughout
the day except for a Promethean Smart board. It is used for math problems for students to
participate in and draw on. Mrs. Bill also uses it to play music and videos for the kids to
sing and dance along to for a brain break. Lesson delivery is from teacher to student
(since the students are so young), but the teacher still acts as a facilitator and asks open-
ended questions for students to offer their own opinions and answers.
Jonathan and Lily have an aide with them when they are in the General Ed
classroom. Alexis has a special pencil grip because he has trouble holding it to properly
write.
This week, Mrs. Bill taught a lesson plan on representing one-to-one
correspondence with manipulatives (this was a reteaching lesson from Tuesdays class).
These were the procedures:
-Students get a pencil, a blue crayon, and a yellow crayon
-Sit on the rug in a circle with worksheet on clipboard
-Teacher pulls a handful of colored squares out of a bag (mix of blue and
yellow) and places them on the ground
-Students are asked if it is easy to tell how many there are of each color
(no)
-Teacher arranges the colors in rows to note the one-to-one
correspondence
 -Students are asked to copy the representation onto their paper, to draw a
one-to-one correspondence line between the squares, and to circle the
group that has the most
-Students are assessed by the teacher to see if they have drawn it correctly,
they are offered direction if they have not represented it correctly
Overall, I was very comfortable in the classroom and was very encouraged by my
host teacher to help out freely with the students. The students have already grown an
attachment to Krysten and me and run to hug us when we come in to help. They freely
ask us questions and ask for help on their work.