Student Teaching

I did my student teaching in a first grade classroom at Anderson Elementary in Grand Blanc, Michigan.  Anderson is a primary building, housing students in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade.  Anderson offers a full range of special education, from an inclusion program to a self-contained program.  Anderson students receive physical education, Spanish, art, and music, as well as an intensive academic curriculum.

I was responsible for 24 students during my student teaching assignment.  For approximately eight weeks, I was responsible for all of the teaching in the classroom.  I taught language arts, math, science, and social studies to my first graders.  During this time, I learned about classroom management, effective weekly lesson planning, assessment, and many other important classroom skills.

My language arts lessons consisted of whole group and small group reading.  We also did process writing as a whole group, as well as individual journal writing.  Students completed daily skill sheets, which helped them to master basic first grade grammatical and phonemic skills, as well as basic comprehension skills.

My science lessons consisted of hands-on science activities.  During my student teaching, we completed two science units--Balance and Motion, and Solids and Liquids.  All of the activities in the units were experiments that the students did in small groups or individually.  Some of our activities included combining solids and water, mixing various liquids with water, and balancing a pencil on it's point.

My math lessons consisted of both a math workbook and manipulatives.  Students frequently used manipulatives to master basic concepts, then they completed the appropriate pages in their workbook as an extension.  Sometimes we studied math as a whole group; sometimes we worked in small groups or individually.