Field Work



Now that field work is over I have had some time to reflect, working in Mrs. Benfer's 5th grade classroom. At first I was a little worried because it was very sudden, but when I got there everything seemed ready for us. Mrs. Benfer was prepared for us and had all of our sessions set up. Our very first session we were able to watch Mrs. Benfer introduce a lesson, which was on mixtures and solutions.  We got to see how she engages her class and then lets them work on their own. After we watched her introduce the lesson and she allowed the students to observe, we got to work with them one on one.  We each got a student or two and we watched them do the lab assignment based off what they saw. We were there for the students if they had questions but other than that we didn't really help them with their lab.  The next session we helped them prepare for their open notes test that was coming up. Mrs. Benfer started the class by showing us her online textbook and how she practices with her students.  It was a review game, girls vs. boys. This game was a fun way to get the students to activate their minds with some competition. Mrs. Benfer told us that the questions on the review game is their test. We did the chapter review with them that day.  We were able to sit with them later that week when they took the test and we were there for questions and to encourage them but we could not tell them the answers.  After that session we had to teach the class with lesson based off chapter 12. Originally i was going to do lesson one but I was not able to attend that class. It ended up being that Katharine and Jess were in the same situation.  We ended up going together as a group and did a cumulative activity on chapter 12. We did a 4 corners activity where the students either, wrote a poem, acted out play from something given in the chapter, rapped a song, or drew a picture. Overall the activity went very well the students seemed to enjoy themselves and it was a good way to wrap up the unit.