Teachers, Developmental Differences, and Learning Modalities

Today was my first day in the classroom, and it was a lot of fun! Let's just say that kids love visitors and new faces. I was able to work with the kids one on one, and take time to observe them in the classroom. During my two hours I was able to make a lot of connections with what we are learning in class. Here are some things that I learned while observing and participating with the class:

What a teacher does all day: 
Teaching elementary school is no walk in the park. Teachers have to be alert and active all day. They have to practice extreme flexibility because all of the kids are on different levels. Teachers have to be patient. That is one thing that I noticed while observing. It is so easy to lose patience. Teachers is really tiring because teachers move from one learn learning modality to the next within a matter of minutes. I was surprised by how many times the teacher switched between these learning modalities, even within the same lesson.

The developmental differences I saw in the children in the classroom: I never realized how different the kids were in their ability to attain information and grasp various concepts. Also some children are much more intelligent and experienced to begin with. It is interesting to see how different children succeed with different subjects. Also, different children do best with specific learning modalities. For ex. the kids had a science lesson on rocks and the earth. Each child had a worksheet they had to fill out. Each child was given a rock, and they had to describe its characteristics, draw a picture of some of its features, and write other observations. They also had microscopes with different rocks underneath them. Kinesthetic and visual learners excelled at this activity, but later on had a hard time listening to verbal instructions. Other students enjoyed listening and had a difficult time with the "hand on" activities. Some students were great with all three learning modalities.

How knowledge of the way people learn relates to the experience of being a teacher: 
I realized how important it is to know how kids learn. Piaget claims that students are active learners. This would suggest that teachers provide many "hands on" activities during classroom time. This would take a lot of preparation and creativity. Vygotsky's theory of learning is focused on the scaffolding. Learners grow best when teachers scaffold within the zone of proximal development. Teacher's need to understand that each student will be on a different level. The teacher will need to adjust his or her scaffolding for each student she works with. I noticed this while observing the class. I noticed that the teacher provided more help to particular students while others received only minimal help. The teacher knew how to adjust her scaffolding for each student in the class. Furthermore, scaffolding had to be adjusted for each child according to the type of learning modality that the teacher was using. It is so important for the teacher to be flexible and patient. That is one thing I want to practice before teaching elementary school.