EQ1 Week 8: Observation

For my observations, I visited Mrs. Melissa Hamilton's first grade class at Marion Elementary in the Ritenour School District (St. Louis, MO). Mrs. Hamilton has been teaching for five years, working with 5th, 2nd and 1st in that time. She is apart of the of the "first wave" (there have been more since) technology cadre at the school and has adapted a Promethean board and document camera into her curriculum. Her classroom was composed of 20 students, decently spread out demographically (1/3 white, 1/3 black, 1/3 hispanic), a testament to the diversity of the district.

All of these factors made for a very interesting observation. With the Hispanic students, all of whom were first generation, Mrs. Hamilton used her bilingual abilities to great results. One girl in particular had much difficulty with English and understanding directions, but Mrs. Hamilton was able to bridge the divide by speaking in Spanish at times.

Another point of interest was the use of technology in the class. The Promethean and document camera were a daily part of the classrooms and the students understood it as much as Mrs. Hamilton. My first day, I watched a math lesson on fractions. A shape, divided into equal parts, could be shaded to show the fraction. For instance, Mrs Hamilton might call on a student to fill in 3/5 of the rectangle red (from blue) and the student would come up and tap each 1/5 with the pen till they reached 3/5. I also saw it used as apart of centers. The students at the board were able to pick, from a number of slides available, activities dealing with spelling, symetry, and alphabetical order. As an example, the spelling game had one student turn around. The other two would pick a word (there was a bank of words covered by movable boxes) and then the other student would attempt to spell the word using a bank of letters. When finished they would uncover the word bank above and see if the student spelled the word correctly. The document camera was also used to blow up images (such as a craft the students were working on or a book they were reading) so that everyone could see it clearly. It might seem simple, but for a student who remembers sitting on the back of the carpet and not being able to see the pictures, this was a big deal :)

My third and final point of interest relates to the students themselves. I was impressed with how much they were able to do. Too often, I hear it said that students, especially in the younger grades, are not ready for this or that. These students proved them wrong. Not only were they polite (please and thank you) and articulate (I heard a first grader say she was parched), but they handled the technology input so well. What I mean to say is that the students did not just take what was thrown at them and accept it; they constantly looked at new ways to do things. Mrs. Hamilton showed me how many of the uses and slides she created for the Promethean were augmented (for the better) or conceived by the students. They noticed better ways to do things or board possibilities that not only helped Mrs. Hamilton, but enhanced their own education. A good quote that she gave me, that works as a great summation of what I saw (and of the constructivist ideals we discussed in class) was this:

"Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants."