Final Reflection

I cannot believe that this is my final blog post for this class, it honestly does make me a little sad.  However, in a week I will be able to say with a sigh of relief "I have finished my first semester in the program!" 
Before the beginning of the semester I honestly thought that the arts consisted of drawing, painting, or coloring, and that my future students will be going to a specialty class for that particular part of their learning.  However now I understand that not only is it extremely important to integrate the arts into everyday curriculum but also that the students LOVE it and it makes learning fun, new, and exciting for them.
When I was in second grade I remember we had a substitute at my school that could tell the most amazing story about a little old lady and pig.  I actually looked forward to the days when my school teacher would be gone (my teacher did very little with the arts in my classroom because as I mentioned above my school had an art specialty class) so that this particular substitute would be able to tell us the story.  I don't want my students to feel the way I felt about my teacher about me, so I want to incorporate arts into as much of my curriculum that I can.  I know that this will be time consuming for me, but it will benefit my students immensely.

Integrated Teaching

We are down to the wire now.  There is one more week of classes then it is finals and depending on how that goes I will finally be able to say with a sigh of relief that I have officially completed my first semester in the Elementary Education Program (yahooooooooo!!!!!!!!)
After having the opportunity to be inside an elementary classroom I have come to understand why it is so important that we learn to integrate the arts.  Learning is something that young students need to learn to love and embrace the arts allow students the opportunity to do this by giving them to opportunity to express themselves freely in a way that may not have been able to do otherwise.  The major problem however, is that many times schools cannot afford or do not find it necessary to have an arts program in their facility and that is where we as future teachers need to step up our game and find ways to bring in the arts.  Show students how thy can move their bodies like a tornado or how they can act out the signing of the Decleration of Independence.  Students learn from these experiences and they are most likely the ones they are going to take with them.

Final Week in Field

You know what is awesome? When I get my blogs mixed up and post the wrong blog for the wrong class. 
This past week was such a hard experience.  I had no clue it was going to be that difficult to say goodbye to my students!
For art this week the students have continued working on their giant puzzle pieces.  Some of them were turning out very well.  The art teacher was very particular on how she wanted the students to finish their pieces.  Each piece had to be checked off by her, and if it did not fit to her expectations then the students were sent back to their desks and had to make the corrections then return to her for approval yet again.
I was so proud of the students, they were really trying their hardest.  I only wish that I could be there to see the final result.

Week Three in Field

This was our third and final week in field for the semester.  I do not even know where the time went!! I loved being in the classroom and working with the students, all of the observing in the world could never prepare someone for the actual experience of teaching.  I have a new found respect for full time teachers.
This week we continued working with the students on their mountain men presentaions.  Since the school uses MAC's rather than PC's the students were using a presentation program called key notes, one that I was not familiar with but seemed similar to Powerpoint. 
I really enjoyed my experience, and now am looking forward to Spring semester field.  However, I do not know if I could ever love the students as much as I did this semester :).

Week Two

Another week has come and gone, it makes me so sad how fast the time is flying.  I LOVE working in the schools, it reminds me that this really is what I want to be doing. 
The class was a little rowdy this week, on Monday Mrs. Martin had a substitue which did not go very well.  However, as the week progressed and Mrs. Martin returned to class the students seemed to calm down some. 
For Art this week the students got to attend their weekly art class where they did sand carvings (the students have been learning about the Native American Indians).  The students really seemed to enjoy it and their work turned out really neat.
We also started teaching this week and for one of our art intergraded assignments we had the students color and label a giant mountain man.  We finish teaching this next week, we will also complete our art intergraded work, hopefully all goes as planned!!

First Week in Field

We are finally into the schools and I LOVE it!  At the beginning of the week I was terrified to enter the schools because it was the beginning of the rest of my carreer.  However, by the end of the first day I realized why I am going into Elementary Education. The students are so eager to learn, during my observation hours Mrs. Martin teaches math.  It is so fun to watch the students faces as they begin to understand and grasp the concepts that are being taught. 
It is really to see if any of the arts are being intergraded into the classroom only being there for 3.5 hours a day.  The school also has speciality classes one of them being art so we do not get to see the students actually working on their art.  However, in the classroom the students have been learing about the Native American Indians.  Hanging on the walls in the classroom are several drawings of Native American dwellings.  Also part of the fourth grade curriculum is learnin the counties and they have made salt dough maps of the state of Utah.
We beging teaching our lessons next week and I am really looking forward to it, hopefully by then, we can find a fun way to incoporate some of the arts into the classroom.

Music Presentations

For one of our final presentations, we chose to use 4th grade curriculum and teach the students about the pioneers traveling west.  The song we chose to incorporate was "The Farmer in the Dell".  For the most part I felt that our  presentation went smoothly.  However, it being the week before field work I felt that it was quite obvious that all of our minds are a bit pre occupied.
That being said though I felt like the groups did a great job, especially the group that had their entire lesson plan re written for them while presenting I thought they handled the situation very well.
After seeing everybody's presentations it makes me excited to one day be able to incorporate music into my daily classroom, because I feel as though it can be extremely beneficial to students, and allows them to understand the information/curriculum in a fun and new way.