Home

Instructor: Anita Johnston        office: JM 250
phone: 517.796.8504    email: JohnstoAnitaM@jccmi.edu

FIELD EXPERIENCE REQUIREMENTS...

An important part of this course will be the opportunity to be involved in an elementary school classroom. 

 

1► Basic Assignment

You will be expected to spend 5 hours in the K-5 classroom over the course of the semester doing field work in mathematics.  These experiences should involve interaction with the children…watching them take math tests does not count.  When you schedule your field work with the classroom teacher, make sure you will be able to be actively involved for that time period.  If not, schedule a different time.  The only exception to this would be planning time with the teacher.  You will be given a log that must be signed by the classroom teacher to document the time you spend in the classroom.  This log must be handed in on the Nov 20 when the Field Experience Journal is due.

• You are required to make arrangements with the specific schools that you choose to observe.

• You are required to spend at least 3 hours observing in a public school and no more than 2 hours of observation at a private school or charter school.  You may spend all 5 hours at public schools.  (You may not spend all 5 hours at a private or charter school.)

• Your cooperating teacher should not be a relative or friend.

2► General Guidelines:  The goal of your field experience is to help better prepare you to be a professional educator (with emphasis on professional).  It is important that you remember that JCC students are guests of their participating school/agency and are representing Jackson Community College and the Education Program.  Thus, I expect that you will:

• behave in a professional manner

• dress in a professional manner, appropriate to the specific school (this includes having no visible body piercing, other than ears, and no visible tattoos)

• obey all the participating school rules

• follow school procedure about sign-in and out

• be at the school site on time

• use appropriate language

• respect the confidentiality of the information learned about students and about the school setting in general

• call the school if an absence is unavoidable

• be enthusiastic, eager, willing to learn, and respectful of diverse teaching styles

• be able to relate field experiences to our MTH 210 classroom content

• learn as much as possible from the supervising teacher

3► Specific Guidelines:  In order for your field experience to count for this course, you must adhere to the following guidelines.

•  The content covered during your site visit must be mathematics.

• Your experience must involve interaction with the children.  Watching them take tests will not count.

• Your field experience may not be completed with a family member, relative, or close family friend.

• Your field experience must take place at one of the approved sites (these will be announced in class).

FIELD EXPERIENCE JOURNAL...

 

You will be expected to keep a journal documenting your experiences.  Each journal entry should correspond to one hour in the classroom, so there should be a total of 5 journal entries.  Each journal entry should be two (2) to three (3) pages in length (not including the header).  The Journal with five (5) entries will be sent as an attachment via email.  A “sample” journal entry follows this section.  Each journal entry should be turned in using a similar format.  Each journal entry needs to contain the following elements.

• General information about the classroom visit.  This may include descriptions of the environment, the teacher, and/or the children or any other general observations that you made.  It should include a description of your activities that day, i.e., did you do one-on-one tutoring, lead a small group, etc. 

• A description of a particular interaction between you and a child.  Is a child that you are working with having difficulties/giftedness in a particular area?  How did you try to help them?  What will you try in the future?  What did a child you were working with do that surprised you (from a mathematical, not behavioral, point of view)?  How did they see a problem or solution differently than you?  Does this child have a marked preference in learning style that may help/hinder their learning of math?

• A section about your experience in the elementary school classroom.  You might want to address what went well, what went poorly, and the children’s response.

• A section discussing the NCTM Standards that you observed being addressed during your observation (select the two to four most applicable).

•  A section discussing your personal reaction to the experience.

Limit the general information to no more than 25% of your journal entry.  You must include a description of a particular interaction between you and a child to receive full credit for your journal.  Although the focus of these journals will be their content, you are studying to be a professional and your journal entries should reflect that.  Careful attention should be paid to grammar, spelling, and punctuation.  Journal entries should be handed in no later than one week after the date of the experience.

 

Copy and paste this form and use as the header of each journal entry.

 

 

Name

School District

School

Supervising Teacher’s Name

Number of Students in Class

Grade Level

Content Covered

Please note any special circumstances below (substitute, special education, etc…).

Date:

Time Spent:

From

To

 

 

 SAMPLE JOURNAL ENTRY...
 

Name

Chloe Brown

School District

Hill Valley

School

Edmonds Elementary

Supervising Teacher’s Name

Harriet Munsey

Number of Students in Class

23

Grade Level

3rd

Content Covered

Rounding to the nearest hundreds, thousands

Please note any special circumstances below (substitute, special education, etc…).

There was a fire drill immediately prior to this lesson and the students were still somewhat antsy.

Date:

January 21

Time Spent:

From

9:45

To

10:45

 

     This was my first time in Mrs. Munsey’s class.  My first impression was of chaos, but after a few minutes I realized that it was “organized chaos”.  She seemed to be able to keep things under control while allowing the children some freedom.  They had just had a fire drill, and they were getting situated in the classroom again.

     The classroom itself was also somewhat chaotic, but in a pleasing way.  There were samples of the childrens’ work plastered over almost every possible surface, from paper snowflakes taped to the windows to some sort of picture collages strung on string across the ceiling.  A good portion of the front wall contained a calendar, complete with a running total of how many days the kids had been in school.  The desks were in clusters of six, three desks on each side with their fronts touching.  A parent had been in for the morning helping with reading, but was just getting ready to leave.

      Mrs. Munsey started to try to get the kids settled down for their math lesson.  It took quite a few minutes to get everyone in their desks with their pencils out.  When she finally had their attention, she started to review rounding.  They had obviously talked about this before, and the students were able to answer many of the questions she posed.  Once she had spent a couple of minutes reviewing the “rules”, she passed out a worksheet and told the students to get started working on it.  Until this point, I had been hanging out at the back of the room just taking it all in.  Now Mrs. Munsey called me to the front of the class and introduced me to the students.  She told them that I would be walking around and helping anyone who needed it.  It didn’t take long at all for a few little arms to shoot up into the air.

     I went to the closest child with his hand up.  His name was Jack and I asked how I could help him.  He said he didn’t even know how to do the first one.  The question said to round 2467 to the nearest hundred.  I asked him if he could find the number in the hundreds place.  He pointed at the 2.  I asked him if he could point to the number in the thousands place, and after he thought for a minute he pointed to the 2, and said that the 4 was in the hundreds place.  Then I asked him to look at the number next to the 4 and decide whether or not it should be rounded up or down, and he said up.  I continued to work him through a couple of problems.  What I decided about Jack was that he knew exactly how to do it, he just couldn’t focus.  If I was there to focus him on the problem he could do it just fine.  Since I can’t be there to focus him all of the time, I think I will ask the teacher if she has any ideas on how to help Jack focus when he is by himself. 

     The next child I worked with was a girl named Sophie.  She could point out that the 4 was in the hundreds place, but she said she didn’t get why the 6 became a 0, and that sometimes the 4 did too and sometimes it got 1 bigger.  I could tell that she just didn’t “get” the rules, so I tried to draw her a picture.  Since we were rounding to the nearest hundreds, I told her to help me make a number line that counted by hundreds and would have the number 2467 on it.  With guidance from me we drew a number line that looked like the following:

 

 

Then I asked her to put a little “x” on the number line where she thought 2467 would be.  She wasn’t quite sure how to do that, so I asked her between what 2 numbers would it be?  And then I asked her if it was closer to 2400 or 2500.  Then I explained to her that rounding isn’t about “making things 0” but about what number you are closer to.  We tried a couple more examples, and she still needed some help setting up her number lines, but I think she got it a little bit better.  If she gets it now, maybe she won’t even need her number lines anymore.

     The principle of Learning and standard of Number and Operations from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Principles and Standards for School Mathematics were demonstrated in the classroom.  I observed that the teacher had built the foundation for an understanding of rounding whole numbers and most students had learned the concept.  Rounding whole numbers is a topic covered in the Number and Operation Standard.  It presupposes an understanding of place value and ordering of numbers.  It is one of the building blocks of estimation.

     I enjoyed my experience in Mrs. Munsey’s class.  I thought Mrs. Munsey handled my introduction to the students and inclusion in the process of learning very well.  The students were open to working with me.  It was interesting to work with students, try to determine their mathematical weaknesses and find methods to try to help them understand the topic and improve their skill set.