Isabelle Tearse

February 13, 2018

8:30 -10:30 am

Science Experiment

Observation & Participation

I observed a science experiment in a Kindergarten classroom at Venetia

Valley. The learning objective was to draw conclusions about the experiment to help

aid them in their understanding of living in the desert. With the group of children I

was with we were doing an experiment to learn more about the type of house we

may want to build if we lived in the desert. In our experiment, we were observing

two ice cubes in different trays, one was placed in the sun and the other in the

shade. The teachers group was studying ice cubes on white and black paper to see

what color they should paint their house. The teacher made it clear that my group

was supposed to focus on predicting which was going to melt the ice, sun, or shade,

and how that affects where we want to build our house in the desert. When working

in these groups I started to adopt a classroom management strategy that I noticed

the primary teacher using. Occasionally she would tell students “that’s a 1” or “that’s

a 2.” Occasionally she would say that is a time out and have them sit away from the

group. I noticed she would use this when she has already told a student to stop a

specific action like touching the ice and when they did it again she would give them

the number warnings. I adopted this because as is the nature of kindergarteners it

want to touch everything. It was clear that the students were learning about the
affects of sun and shade on the ice because they were making observations about

how much water had collected in the trays over time and how small the ice had

gotten. Throughout this time I would ask students what they believed would be the

best place to build their house based on the experiment and what their reasoning

was for their decision. At the end of the experiments, the teacher called everyone’s

attention by using the call and response of “123… eyes on me” and all the students

knew to put their hands on their head.

Reflection

From this lesson, I learned how curious kindergarteners really are and how

important it is to give them time to fool around and explore the materials before

they are used for an academic purpose. I learned that it is most effective when

warning are brief and simple because then the teacher doesn’t draw a lot of

attention to the action and the student knows exactly where they fall on the

hypothetical totem poll of behavior. I also learned that it is extremely important to

ask students guiding questions because sometimes it leads them to make

realizations about the experiment and how it relates to the lesson that they may

have not come up with otherwise.

This observation significantly helped me with my understanding of my capstone

topic of classroom management. I had seen many different forms of disciplining students

and giving out warnings, but not one as simple as giving students numbers. Through

observing this, I realized that students could understand that they did something wrong if

the warning is very clear and simple. This helped me to understand younger students

have shorter attention spans and it is easier to make things simple for them to understand
and for there to be no room for confusion. Another classroom management strategy I

witnessed was at the end with the call and response. With this, the students all seemed to

know to drop everything in their hands and put their hands on their heads. This added to

my knowledge of classroom management strategies because I have seen this strategy

used many times before and watching it used in this observation cemented in my mind

how useful and universal this classroom management strategy really is.

This observation will affect me as a future teacher because it showed me how

successful a classroom can be when the expectations are set up from the beginning off the

year the students know what happens when they misbehave. Additionally it will influence

me because it showed me how it is possible to discipline students and give them warning

without taking any time away from the lesson being taught or the activity that is

occurring. I hope as a teacher I will be able to implement both the teaching strategies in

my future classroom. While I am aspiring to be a special education, I think that both of

these strategies would be beneficial to use in a special Ed classroom.