Blog Post #7

Blog Post #7

In my service learning  experience I have seen many standards taught and met by students at Vineyard Elementary School. In a recent 4th grade classroom I was in the teacher was able to teach her students about fractions. I now realize that this teacher went through and taught and retaught two of the core standards. One of the standards she taught was comparing two fractions with different denominators. The teacher used a day by day booklet to teach different aspects of fractions and different ways to solve fraction problems. I have also seen many standards taught in math in 1st grade. In her class the teacher taught the idea of "taking away" or subtraction by using a real life problem. The teacher compared student home lunches to student lunches. We then helped the students to determine how many more had home lunch then school lunch. I also then have seen many times English taught through cursive writing in 3rd grade to interpreting stories in 4th grade based on text. Some topics I have not seen Surprisingly I have not seen anything related to computer education in the classrooms I have worked in. I have seen occasional uses of computers but only when "free time" is given. I think that this a missed opportunity. I believe that if teachers used this resource of technology more their students would be able to interact better and have more chances to have a fun lesson they would remember. I believe more emphasis has been shown in both English specifically reading and in math curriculum. I think this may be due to the fact that these topics are generally harder for students to learn and must be continually retaught and built upon. My cooperating teacher feels that standard testing is good to show where the students are at in curriculum but unfair in the number of tests given. I agree with this statement and think that generally testing is a good measure of knowledge and skills yet, I think there is a line where there are too many tests given.