Field was absolutely wonderful. That's all I can really say (but I will say more for the sake of making this blog more than 2 sentences :)). I think everyone was pretty apprehensive about entering their field experiences. No one quite knew what to expect and I think there was self doubting all around. But I was surprised to find how easily I got into it. Once the teacher introduced me and the students began asking questions about me I was completely at ease and eager to answer their questions and get to know them better. I think that's a great lesson to learn because it can be a lifelong habit I can do as a teacher. Spending the time getting to know the students and visa versa could be crucial in how effective the class is. If I know them I can design lessons that are specific to their needs. And if they know me they can feel comfortable asking questions and sharing answers. I hope I can do that regularly.
Integrating the arts into the class wasn't hard at all. In fact it was the most memorable part of our lessons. I think everyone in our cohort taught 5 lessons but our teacher decided we should teach the whole unit so we ended up teaching 10 full lessons! We needed the use of the arts to get kids involved and their minds activated. Their first major lesson with the arts was when they had to make their weather instruments. While they didn't have a whole lot of room for creativity they still got to have a hands on activity involving coloring, cutting and pasting. One of the coolest activities we did involved the class creating the sounds and movements of weather. We asked them what sorts of things happen when it gets stormy and they answered with rain, wind, lightning. So I asked them further as to what sorts of sounds those things made and if they could recreate them. So part of the class got to be the wind and others the rain and the more active kids got to jump around and be the lightning while making crashing sounds. I told them to start out quiet at first with a little wind and a little rain. Then it could get louder and louder until finally the lightning comes in with loud noises and the rain and wind got noisy too! Then I told them the storm was ending to to get gradually softer and softer until we were back to a peaceful classroom. VERY cool activity and the loved it!
Another of our activities let them get creative. The class was divided into groups and each group had an assigned severe weather topic (tornadoes, hurricanes, etc.). They got to spend time researching their topics and finding out all the information they could find. Once they had finished that they were given a poster and told to draw pictures and add the information they had been learning about. They were given markers, crayons, colored pencils, glue, glitter, and all sorts of things to make their posters as fun as as possible. I was amazed at how creative the kids got! Some kids made their posters look like newspapers, other kids looked like the cover of a book. They also had a lot of fun drawing the pictures of what they thought their severe weather looked like. They then got the opportunity to share in front of the class what they had learned. Each member of the group had to participate so everyone was actively involved. The posters were hung in the hallways of the school for all the other students to see and they got really excited about that. It was fun and the students really got into it!
What I learned from this field experience is that you can teach students a lot from a book and they can usually spit it back to you but if you involve the arts they will talk about it excitedly for days afterwards and it will be stored in their memories for much longer! I got requests all the time do the rain activity again and again. So I'm so glad I was able to see the arts in action because it showed me how much it makes learning stick!
