KC Knudsen

I started serving my service learning hours on Monday, September 17, 2007. I served about 3.5 hours. When I first arrived at the school, I met with the principal. She placed me in a sixth/seventh grade math class. The class was learning about the Pre-Algebra concept of the distributive property. I couldn’t believe my eyes! The entire class of about 16 students was participating in the lesson. It was great. The instructor gave me a book and I was able to help students that were struggling with the concept. The class lasted about 50 minutes, but the time flew by. In that miniscule period of time, I learned so much. I realized that even though the teacher may teach well and accommodate all of the students, sometimes students need to have someone else explain the concept to them. I don’t understand why this works, but it did several times during the period.

All afternoon, for the next 2.5 hours, I sat in a second grade class. I didn’t like this class so much. Well, I don’t think it was the class, I think it was the instruction. There was absolutely nothing for me to do. I sat for 2.5 hours, it was terrible. I did observe a few interesting things. I observed that the instructor used the “count down method” to get the kids under control after lunch. You know, the 10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1, and it actually worked. Well, for the most part. After the kids got settled, they shared the sentence and picture they drew before lunch. The teacher didn’t seem like she was paying attention. But, she would know when one student stopped and she would signal for the next student to begin. When the class was finished with sharing their pictures, they began religion class (I am doing my service learning hours at a church school). She popped in a 30 minute video for the kids to watch. Needless to say, I did learn a lot about Joseph. At the end of the video, she briefly, I mean briefly, discussed what happen in the video with the students. The class then began their science lesson, which was another 30 or so minute video on how plants grow. The teacher briefly discussed the video and they moved on to social studies. The class read out of the textbook, one student per paragraph or section, and they discussed the new vocabulary. The last lesson I “observed” in the classroom was the handwriting lesson. The class went over the problems with the previous letter “K”. I thought that the teacher made a weird lower-case “K”. She looped the “<” part of the “K” so that it kind of looked like a weird cross between a cursive “K” and a script “K”. I didn’t have time to ask her why students are being taught the letter this way. I intend to next week.