Primary Literacy Field
I received permission from the classroom teacher to publish these photos on my website.
I completed a seven week field for my Primary Literacy course at Grove City College. For this field, I was in a third grade class at Oakview Elementary School in the Lakeview School District. This was a school much different from the school I grew up attending. It was in a very rural area, and much smaller than the elementary school I attended. For this field, I was at the school one hour each week for seven weeks. When I went to Oakview, I was there during the class's English Language Arts time. This allowed me to see how literacy is really taught in the primary grades. I also got involved in teaching the students by reading to the class, administering tests and quizzes to the whole class as well as in small groups, and teaching one of my own lessons.
Throughout my time at my placement, the students learned a lot about digraphs, pre-fixes and suffixes. These were difficult concepts for the students, but they did a great job of asking questions to clarify when they did not understand. In addition, the students who did understand were often able to explain it to their peers who were struggling with the concepts, further solidifying the concepts in their own minds.
My lesson was about comparing and contrasting and using Venn diagrams to do so. My co-op wanted me to do a lesson on one of the Poppleton the Pig books, so I chose Poppleton and Friends by Cynthia Rylant. I chose two stories from this book, "Dry Skin" and "Grapefruit" for the students to compare and contrast. We picked out the similarities and differences between the settings, themes, and plots in each story as a class and wrote those down on a Venn diagram on the front board in the classroom. The students then went back to their seats and completed their own Venn diagrams individually on two of the characters from the stories, Poppleton and Cherry Sue. The students did a good job of grasping the concepts of comparing and contrasting. Some struggled to remember where the comparisons and differences went in the Venn diagram, but they eventually understood after I explained a second time. Photos of me teaching this lesson are pictured above.
Overall, this field was such a valuable experience that I really enjoyed a lot. I learned so much helping in this classroom at Oakview, and I would love the opportunity to go back sometime!
Throughout my time at my placement, the students learned a lot about digraphs, pre-fixes and suffixes. These were difficult concepts for the students, but they did a great job of asking questions to clarify when they did not understand. In addition, the students who did understand were often able to explain it to their peers who were struggling with the concepts, further solidifying the concepts in their own minds.
My lesson was about comparing and contrasting and using Venn diagrams to do so. My co-op wanted me to do a lesson on one of the Poppleton the Pig books, so I chose Poppleton and Friends by Cynthia Rylant. I chose two stories from this book, "Dry Skin" and "Grapefruit" for the students to compare and contrast. We picked out the similarities and differences between the settings, themes, and plots in each story as a class and wrote those down on a Venn diagram on the front board in the classroom. The students then went back to their seats and completed their own Venn diagrams individually on two of the characters from the stories, Poppleton and Cherry Sue. The students did a good job of grasping the concepts of comparing and contrasting. Some struggled to remember where the comparisons and differences went in the Venn diagram, but they eventually understood after I explained a second time. Photos of me teaching this lesson are pictured above.
Overall, this field was such a valuable experience that I really enjoyed a lot. I learned so much helping in this classroom at Oakview, and I would love the opportunity to go back sometime!