The past two weeks I have had the wonderful opportunity to observe at Southside Elementary School, in Mrs.Westbrooks Kindergarten class. Observing a kindergarten class was so much fun I really enjoyed seeing all of Mrs.Westbrooks teaching methods I have learned about, just haven't seen them in action quite yet. I have never really considered teaching kindergarten in the past before, but after I observed this class, my perspective changed, to possibly teaching kindergarten one day.
Mrs. Westbrook did an amazing job with group work within her classroom. The both times that I was in this class I noticed that Mrs.Westbrook is very good at this teaching style. The students were going over phonics, which are letters, letter sounds, and the "th-", "ch-", and "wh-". The teacher played a game with the students using flashcards to practice quickly recognizing these things. All of the students were involved and paying attention to Mrs.Westbrook. One of the other things I took away was Mrs.Westbrooks classroom management skills. When I arrived to observe the class the students were at centers or stations, Mrs. Westbrook had a timer set to let students know when to switch centers. Without saying a word to the students, the timer would go off and the students would clean-up and go to the next center. When the final timer went off the clean-up song started playing which singled the kids to clean-up. All of the students participated in singing the song, cleaning-up, and being on the carpet ready to go when the timer went off.
My greatest take away from observing this class was definitely having very good classroom management skills for my own class one day. It was so cool to see how well these students knew the classroom norms and what exactly Mrs.Westbrook was expecting from them. It is amazing that kids at such a young age know how to follow the rules that are set at the beginning of the year. I only hope that one day that when I become a teacher my students understand the norms and what I expect from them.
In conclusion, I had so much fun observing this class. Mrs.Westbrook had an amazing classroom layout for her students and it worked really well for that class. The classroom was how you would expect a kindergarten classroom to be, which is fun, colorful, and inviting. I may have not wanted to be a kindergarten teacher before I observed this class, but my perspective has changed. Who knows kindergarten may be what I end up teaching in the future.
