Lab Experience- Final Week

            This week is going to be bittersweet because it is my last week working with these children that I have made such great relationships with. It is always hard leaving when you have spent so much time working with them and getting to know who they are. However, I will cherish all the memories that I have from teaching the various grade levels. Within this last week I am scheduled to teach two lessons, one Tuesday and one Thursday. Tuesday I taught a lesson on pronouns to the fourth grade. I started out the lesson by asking them to define what they thought pronouns were and I had them give an example. I had previously made a chart divided into two sections (singular and plural) and I gave each child a pronoun and instructed them to solve what category their word went in. The children did great with this activity and seemed to have few, if any, problems. I knew that I was ready to move on to “Pronoun Bingo,” where they had to fill up their boards with pronouns and then we were ready to play! They all loved this activity and wanted to keep playing the whole class period. The final activity was an independent activity where I gave the children a worksheet to complete. Overall, this lesson was a huge success. At the end of the lesson, a sense of sadness came upon all of us because the children knew that it would be the last lesson I taught with them. Since I was there a majority of the time in the mornings, I was able to work with the fourth grade class more than any other. I made wonderful connections with each child and I am sad to let them go; however, I know that I was able to plant the seeds of knowledge in them so they will be able to flourish in their upcoming educational journeys.

           Thursday was the last day of the lab experience which brought a wide range of emotions. I am happy that I accomplished one of my personal goals which was to teach older children so that I can become a well balanced teacher. However, it was very sad to see the children’s faces when I told them that it would be my last day here. In particular, this one little boy asked me if I would come back to teach them next year because he loved me teaching him. Hearing a little boy tell me something as sweet as that just melted my heart and at that moment I knew I had made it as an aspiring teacher. Those are the moments that I will cherish forever and the reason why I want to become a teacher. I did teach my final lesson today over subject-verb agreement to the third grade group. Overall, it was a big success and I feel like the children really understood the concept once the lesson was finished. I started with a BrainPop video and then went into an activity that allowed the children to work in groups. The groups were given sentence strips with sentences on them and they had to choose the verb made the sentence correct. Lastly, I had the children work independently on a worksheet so that I could assess their knowledge in this subject matter. I cannot believe how fast this experience went. There have been some low points, but their have also been wonderful moments that have made this experience worth while. I am grateful that I have had the opportunity to work with ESOL and be able to expand my abilities as a teacher outside of what I am comfortable with.