Entry 4

What clerical and preparation responsibilities have you participated in? 
How does this teacher manage assessment?

At Dan Peterson school I was asked to take data on the goals that the students did. I would mark whether the students completed the task independently, with a partial prompt, or a full prompt. I would then write any comments I had concerning the progress of the students. At Barrett elementary I was not asked to record information, but, I did notice the way that the teacher kept track of the students' scores. Each student was assigned a number. The teacher would call each number and the students would say what score they got. If the students did not want to say their score out loud they had the option of walking up to the teacher and tell her the score secretly. I do not think that I would be able to score things that way in my own classroom. I think it is important to have the students learn about honesty, but, I do not think I would trust my students to give me the correct score. Recording progress is important for the growth of students. I know that by grading everything myself I would have a lot of extra work but I want to be able to see where my students are missing questions so that I may better teach them in the future.

Entry 3

I was able to spend more time at Barrett Elementary school than I did at the beginning of my volunteer work. I was able to notice how some of the students really struggled with some of the concepts. The way that the teacher helped those students was to work with them one on one. She would explain things slower for those students using pictures and simple words. They would work things through step by step. At Dan Peterson, many different learning methods were used to teach the students because many of the students could not speak. Some could speak but not very well. One student did not know English but did know a different language. For some of the students we would help them connect words with their meanings by having pictures to go with what they were reading. They would have to match the words to the pictures. We also used some action pictures. We would have the students say what the people in the pictures were doing. Each  student understands things differently. It is important to make sure that each student gets an opportunity to have an equal learning experience by teaching in a variety of different ways.