Critical Explorations and Field Experience

This week has been amazing. In my Cultural Contexts class we are tutoring students in an after school program while also involving them in a critical exploration project. A critical exploration project allows the student to focus on something they would like to know or learn more about. My child is absolutely fabulous and has chosen the topic of pandas. We are trying to find out how the giant panda and the red panda are different and related. This week I taught her about animal classification and we classified each of the animals see compare and contrast them. It was an amazing experience and I can't wait to continue with her next week.

I also got my field experience school and teacher assignment. I couldn't have asked for a better placement. My teacher is the most creative, enthusiastic, organized, and loving teacher I have ever met. She has her room 100% organized with everything in a box, labelled, decorated, and in its correct place. She sings songs to her children so that they can remember the rules as well as their lessons. She encouraged them to do their best, think for themselves, and not to give up. I absolutely love her, and I've only visited her classroom twice.

Our fist meeting consisted of an introduction, while during our second meeting I observed her math instruction and interviewed her afterwards. Her mini math less was a continuing lesson on subtraction. The kids learned about "Linus the Minus" and they all loved it. She later admitted that she found this on pinterest last year, but not one kid has had trouble with subtraction since implementing "Linus the minus".

I also found "Gus the plus" on pinterest, if you interested. After the mini lesson the kids went around in stations to solve difference subtraction problems.Another amazing thing that I noticed was what she used for dry erase boards. Each student had their own vhs cassette box. One side was red for math and the other side had lined paper for literacy. They were labelled with their number and they carried their markers and erasers inside the box it was a genius idea. The photo below is the cassette box that she used, I couldn't find a photo of one decorated and prepared but you get the idea. Overall a great week, despite the fact that I have a 10 page midterm due on Monday. Yikes!!!!