Service Learning at Centennial Elementary

      I helped out Mrs. Black today in the Special Education program since my regular teacher is on vacation. With these students it is even more important to keep them engaged. It is really difficult to keep them focused long enough to get through an assignment. Mrs. Black has come up with awesome ways to get the students to pay attention though.     The first thing she had me do was helping a student with writing. He had a hard time to sit through long enough to get through one sentence without going on rave about his day. I was really struggling to keep him attentive and I didn't want the teacher to feel like I wasn't capable. She was amazing though and just came over to help and give me tips. One way for writing she does is if they don't like the writing prompt, she lets them right about whatever they like. They aren't at the level yet where it matters what they are writing about, it is more important just to get them spelling out words. Once she told me we ...

      Clear routines are very important for students to have in school. It helps give expectations and to know what to expect for the day. Children work best when they have some kind of structure. Mrs. Hill does a great job of this. She has the schedule posted on her whiteboard and follows it everyday. She starts with Math, and with that there is always a morning  fraction. Next there is English where they have phonics worksheets. After that it is Science where they have daily reading section. For their last subject they have Social Studies where they do reading from a book. There is more done with each subject but it just depends on what lesson they are on. By doing this it allows the students to prepare for what is next.      With structure, it is still beneficial to offer choices to the students. You still have plans and exercises that must be completed everyday, but you can give the students an option on how to do them. Mrs. Hill did this in a...

     Mrs. Hill seemed to use the learning theory of cognitivism the most. Cognitivism focuses on how information is received, organized, stored, and retrieved by the mind. A big emphasis throughout her lesson was that there are multiple ways to solve problems, but you still get the same, right answer. Whatever way that works best for the student in their mind is the way they should do it. Some students pulled from a more creative area of their mind and visualized the problems using models. Other students used the more logical area of their mind and did actual problem solving like multiplication and addition. One other emphasis during her lesson was to work and be able to share with her or the other students at their table on how they reached the answer.      One example that I think best demonstrates this idea is when she was teaching them math.  They had to find the surface area of 20 cubes pushed together to solve for how much fabric would be needed ...