Becoming an Educator
Julia Duffy
Abstract
Teaching changes drastically over time. The things kids
need to know to enter kindergarten varies each year. All
the way down to whether to teach handwriting before or
after preschool is debated. To help test these theories, I did
my own lesson plan. I incorporated a ton of more modern
activities and ways of learning. In my first lesson we
talked about community helpers. In my second lesson we
worked on name identification. Even with all the research
I did, I still fell short on some modern-day beliefs such as
handwriting. I spent way more time than I expected to
planning my lessons but that is the reality of planning
good days of work. As my internship concluded, my
students were better at identifying their names. My
students were also making more attempts at writing their
names, even though most believe handwriting is not
appropriate for them yet.
Background
There is a huge variety in teaching styles. This variety has
a lot to do with the age of the educator. My lesson plan
was designed based off of what I had seen through the
semester that the kids were not understanding. As a young
educator who is just entering the field, I felt like
incorporating more hands-on material was better for the
students. The students I worked with had a very hard time
getting through lessons which is why I split them into
such small groups. They need a very low teacher to
student ratio to be successful. I am hoping that seeing the
way the kids did in such small groups will show my lead
that they need less large group work. On a regular day,
they get little small group interaction.
. Figure 6
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Implementation
I started off with my lesson plan and a ton of research on
Pinterest and teacher sites. For my first lesson plan, my
theme was community helpers. I cut out police badges for
the kids to decorate with markers and paper. I then cut out
fingerprint cards to do fingerprinting. I bought a small ink
pad to use. I made a red circle and green circle to attach to
a stick to play red light green light. For vocabulary, I
printed out a list of careers with pictures. Lastly, I made
worksheets to learn the letter P.
 
When I arrived at school, I started the morning meeting
with a song and questions. We discussed the career the
kids dream of. Most of the kids wanted to be some sort of
community helper. After our meeting, we went to the
table. In our large group, we did our worksheets and made
our badges. I sent the kids to play and pulled the kids one
at a time to do their fingerprints. We concluded the
morning outside playing red light green light.
Figure 5
Implementation Cont.
The second time I did a lesson I started out the same way
with a ton of research. My theme this time was skills
needed. We worked on name identification and writing.
This lesson had three parts. In small groups we did
everything because I saw they did better that way. I
bought name strips, people cut outs, and printed
worksheets. I wrote each childs name and cut out between
each letter on the strips. I also made dots in the shape of
each childs name on the worksheet. Some of my kids
needed the dots to trace.
We started with the worksheet. The sheet included a name
line, how many letters are in their name and the first letter,
as shown in Figure 5. After we completed that, I had the
kids match the letters of their names that I had cut out.
Once they were matched, we glued them on a big paper. I
hung the paper of the children’s names on the wall. They
love telling people their name is up there. I handed them
each their little person cut out and they colored them after
nap time. I found a bunch completed in their cubbies that
they could not wait to show me on the following Monday.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Conclusion
My students did a very good job with both of my lessons.
In my original lesson, they had fun doing all the crafts I
had. They did not enjoy getting their fingerprints done, as
shown in figure 2, because they don’t like being dirty. In
my second lesson, the kids enjoyed the personalization.
Some of my students could not differentiate between
themselves and another child. For example, if I helped one
child count the letters of their name and then helped
another the first child would write what I told the second
child. One thing I did notice was their lack of handwriting
ability. In later research, I learned that having them trace
their name in sand would have been more beneficial. At
the age of seven is when students are ready to write. The
bones of the hand are not developed at four years old to
perform these tasks correctly, as shown in figure 1. I
learned a lot working on this project. The amount of time
lesson planning took amazed me. I thoroughly enjoyed my
internship and my project. I cannot wait to become an
elementary educator.
Figures
Figure 3
Figure 4