Field Experience

I enjoyed every single day of my field experience. The first week was a lot of fun because Melanie and I got to know our class. We were able to help our students with math, writing, reading, and even social studies.
Our first full week is when we began teaching. Our cooperating teacher set aside the entire time of social studies for us to teach our unit. If we ever didn't finish a lesson, she would let us just finish it the next day. She was a lot of fun to work with. We taught the students about the Revolutionary War. It took us a little bit to find a way to integrate the arts but we came up with a brilliant plan. For one of our assessments we wanted them to perform skits. Before we had them act out the skits, we talked to them about voice elements. During their skits they had to use at least one voice element (which made the skits so funny.) One boy in our class was a British soldier and he did the entire skit with a British accent. Just by integrating that piece of theater, they were able to remember three of the reasons why the Revolutionary War began.
Our second full week is when we integrated our second arts. We decided to integrate visual arts. We taught them about shape. I don't think they realized that there are two different categories of shape. They really enjoyed the lesson. We integrated it with teaching about the Continental Congress. Their assessment was to create a picture of Carpenters Hall, where the Continental Congress met. In the picture they could only use scissors, construction paper, and glue. They had to use at least one geometric shape and at least one free-form shape. Then they had to write a paragraph about Carpenters Hall. They really enjoyed making the pictures.
Overall field was a lot of fun. As much as we thought that integrating arts would be hard, it was fun to fit it in.