Brandy Barnett

Service date and time: Friday 08/31/07 8:00a.m.-10:00a.m.
My service learning experience is being conducted in Mrs. Beach’s first grade class at Emerald Shores Elementary School. While I was waiting to get my volunteer pass in the administration office, I observed the morning announcements via television. The vice principal was recognizing two 3rd graders. One had gotten a perfect score on the reading portion of the FCAT and the other had gotten a perfect score on the math portion of the FCAT. Both of the students received a certificate and recognition school wide. I began to wonder how that recognition makes other students feel. Surely those two students deserved an award of some kind with attaining a perfect score, but what about the students that only missed one or two questions. How do they feel about their performance now?
Upon entering Mrs. Beach’s room, my eyes were immediately drawn to the way the children’s desks were organized. They were in groups of four, with the desks facing each other. This method is one that Vygotsky would recommend. In the center of the desks were two baskets. One basket contained books and the other contained crayons, scissors, and glue. I saw two children sitting by themselves on opposite sides of the room and made a mental note to ask Mrs. Beach about the reasoning behind that. My task for today was to work with two students on the phonics and writing of letters. I had flash cards each with its own letter on it. I was to show the children a letter, have them give me the sound the letter makes, a word that starts with that letter, and then have them write the letter down. I could tell immediately that the two children needed individual help in this area. They both had a hard time finding words that began with the letters. They would start to look around the room searching for things that started with that letter and then they would get off task paying attention to other children. They were easily distracted and not interested in learning this skill at all. I could see that they were not engaged in this activity. So, I decided to modify it a little bit. Instead of me giving them the letter, I would hold out the cards in front with the letters facing away from them and let them pick their own letter. This seemed to spark their interest and make it a little more personal. Going through twenty-six letters can still be tedious, so I told them that once we finished with the letters they could take the cards and spell out their name with them. This seemed to make the activity flow much better. I only worked with two children before we went to the library, but with the time needed for those two children I began to realize how easy it is for a child to not get the individual attention they may need. Mrs. Beach has at least seventeen children in her class and working one on one with two children took about an hour. It would definitely be hard to schedule that kind of time in daily. At the library, I asked Mrs. Beach about the children in the isolated desks. She said one child had stolen something from another child and lied about it. The second child she said had behavioral problems with the group he was sitting at. She said that once the student is moved out of the group desks into an individual desk, they remain there for a week and then are allowed to return. I have not learned anything about behavioral and classroom management yet to reflect on the effectiveness of this discipline procedure. I did think that a week seemed like a long time for a first grader to be in what I considered “time out”.