A Reflection Of Teaching Methods In The Classroom

Walking into the 3rd grade classroom was a little intimidating at first; however, Mrs. Rudolph made the experience an easy transition for the students and myself. For my field experience, I got placed at Mississippi Heights Elementary School in Sauk Rapids, Minnesota with the cooperating teacher Mrs. Rudolph. My first experience with the class as a whole was on October 10th, starting around eight A.M. Sitting in the classroom for the first time, I started to observe Mrs. Rudolph and her teaching methods for about two hours. In these two hours, I observed how the teacher successfully organizes the classroom and skillfully delivers instruction to the class, and how she had thought out her strategies for teaching and helping the students. Watching

Rudolph successfully organized her classroom and skillfully delivered instruction to the class was by doing more hands-on works with each student. Mrs. Rudolph did not do a lot of individual work with the students because of the class size; however, she did tend to take the class as a group to the front of the room and do interactive lectures. The first lesson I observed Mrs. Rudolph teach was math. She was very active with the students and having the students get up and do hand actions to help them learn the vocabulary words. For example, the students needed to learn the word horizontal. In the middle of teaching the lecture, Mrs. Rudolph got everyone up and had the students show with their hands horizontal and which direction it goes in. Another example of how she has hands on style of teaching I saw during her vocabulary lesson. After explaining to the students what each word meant, she pulled out a huge piece of paper that she had written fun and exciting sentences on that had missing words in them. The students had to decide which word went into each sentence and tape the word into the space they thought was

Rudolph rewards healthy behavior is by handing out “bucks” to the students when doing the right activities. These bucks can then be use later on in the month for a party that they throw. However, if the students were doing poorly by not listening or talking too much, a buck could be taken away from the students.

Another way Mrs. Rudolph showed positive management in the classroom was by gently using error corrections. If students messed up on questions she would ask them to redo it by taking their time and motivating them to think about it. She would tell the students that she believe in them to get the right answer. For example, Mrs. Rudolph asked a young girl to do a math problem on the board, but the girl got the wrong answer. Mrs. Rudolph asked her in a positive voice if she could redo it. After thinking about it the girl got the right answer.

Over all, I learned a lot from watching Mrs. Rudolph interact with her classroom. Observing the positive management she has over the room all the way to the way she successfully has organized the room into a positive learning area was an extremely good learning experience for me. From this observation, I have learned how I want to move on to be a teacher. I want to be a positive, energetic leader in my classroom just like Mrs.