Running head: REFLECTION OVER OBSERVATION 1

Reflection Over Observation

Agueda Michelle Chavez

Dr. Bryan Renfro

Author Note

Paris Junior College: EDCU 1301.200

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Reflection Over Second Grade Observation

There are many ways to teach a class. Everyone has their own style in teaching and how

to do so. Its hard to come up with the perfect plan to teach. Not every time will your planned go

as you planned because many children won’t listen or they might just have a bad day. Some of

the things I have learned is to show the children to be motivated on learning and using the

Gardner’s Five Minds when teaching. When observing the classroom, I saw the group of

children, that had speech and communication disorder. There were also some children that had a

great Specific Academic Ability and Leadership with some topics/subjects. Looking at the group

I also realized, there are many ways to speak to children and showing them that you care that

they learn.

Gardner’s Five Minds

When teaching children, you have to teach them in the type of tone or way, where they

understand the topic being taught. You can’t push them over their limit. Also, yelling won’t work

either. I remember when I was young, even now I see that there are some teachers who have lost

their patients when it comes to teaching children. Even when its just about simple things, some

teachers over react. When you listen to a child or look at them while you are teaching you have

to think about Gardner’s Five Minds. Which are creating mind, ethical mind, respectful mind,

disciplined mind, and synthesizing mind. These five minds will keep you on track when it comes

to making a child understand anything. Creating and ethical mind help with extending the brain

of the child or helping them think out of the box. This is a very important thing for kids to use

when learning. You have to get them to answer questions and be involved in the subjects being

taught. Respectful and Disciplined Mind creates a boundary between the teacher and students,

this lets the student know who is the authority and leader. Having boundaries gets the students
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attention, makes it easier to learn because they know who is in charge. Finally, Synthesizing

Mind, helps the teacher understand who needs help and who can coordinate massive amount of

information. Knowing and using Gardner’s Five Minds helps the teacher have control of the

classroom. Also, it helps knowing your students and how to teach them.

Speech and Communication Disorders

Another, thing I noticed when watching the teacher interact with the class was that some

kids had Speech and Communication Disorders. The teacher explained, to me how to work with

students with disorders and what to do while teaching. The only thing I didn’t really enjoyed was

that the teacher could have waited to tell me those type of things when we were alone. Telling

children about their disorder makes them feel useless, in my point of view. The reason is because

I once went through and didn’t like how people push you down just because you aren’t

understanding a topic. Everything has its time and the child will understand the topic eventually.

Giving the child the opportunity to show him/her self makes them feel like they are achieving

something and getting better. You can’t judge them just because of their life style or the way

their parents are raising them. If that child needs help offer them attention or teach them the way

they understand. Yes, it might take a while or it might not, that’s just up to how much time and

dedication one puts out. When learning the abilities of a child, can help the teacher create a better

learning environment.

Specific Academic Ability and Leadership

In addition, having a specific academic ability and leadership is a very strong suit to wear

among others. I learned that kids need to understand that some of them are leaders and need to

step it up. You can’t pressure them but you can show them how to work on being a leader. Since,

I was young I always been the oldest sibling. I never really liked it but when it came to school,
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being a leader was just something I was good at. Helping others and being able to communicate

with others was something simple to me. When I look at the children enjoying the academic

success they achieve, that made it clear that they have the ability to be responsible in becoming a

leader. It’ll be hard at first, but with time they’ll characteristics of giftedness will show. After all,

when seeing the improvement of using large vocabulary and becoming quick learners, they’ll

understand why it was important. When giving the children the opportunity of growing in their

academics, can also increase our output of college graduations. That’s how I see the future, when

I imagine a teacher taking their time and effort to teach a student to were they understand the

subject.

Conclusion

To conclude, at the end of the observation I gained a lot of information and had to let go

of things I thought could be useful. When teaching young kids, you have to gain their full

attention, so they can learn what you are teaching them. There will be some child that can’t focus

in class, and this is where the teacher jumps in to help that child. Even though, there isn’t enough

time to help everyone, if the teacher organizes their lesson around those who need help. It can

evaluate teaching strategies and identifying intelligence quickly. Showing them how to work as a

team can increase the ability of those who need help, when they see their friends being good at

something they aren’t, they’ll try to better themselves. Learning the capability of the students

will make the classroom work easily.