Practicum and Field Experience - Assignment Example

Practicum and Field Experience A practicum or field experience is primarily designed for students to understand, observe and learn from a teacher or mentor who is working in the classroom making use of the different teaching styles and technology in an effective manner. In this regard, it can be said while such observations one comes across different teaching modes of mentor. As a keen observer of the field experiment one need to can adjust easily to the teaching, adapt effective learning styles and manage discipline and order in the classroom. As a participant of the field experience for Birth-PK setting K-3 setting, it was an interesting and challenging experience which helped me gain literacy awareness about education. It also helped me develop and polish my instructional strategies amongst young children. This process of learning helps build and foster relationship with young children at this time when they are in their pre-kindergarten age (Reynoldsa, Magnusonb, & Ou, 2010). First and foremost, I learnt that a child in Birth and PK 3 setting, being as young as 1-8 years is expressive, and they show various behavioral traits in different situations. Children always respond the way they are treated and normally show resisting behaviors if they feel ignored or feel if they are not being perceived correctly by their teacher(Reynoldsa, Magnusonb, & Ou, 2010). In this regard, Dreikurs’ Social Discipline Model can be examined. According to the scholar, there are four reasons due to which a child misbehaves in the class. Firstly, they show their intrusive behavior because they are attention seekers. Secondly, a child always contests for power and control over his or her peers. Thirdly, the child is naturally an avenger who seeks revenge when he feels deprived, isolated or is treated unfairly. Lastly, young children exhibit inadequacies because of their limited exposure in the new world. Thus, Dreikurs had the view that it was important for teachers to encourage children through motivational schemes and providing rationale consequences of their actions that can be in the form a reward like praise or gift. In case the child is continuously misbehaving then he should be punished as well (Tauber, 2007). As the teacher guided the children, I learnt that she took effective measures to reduce the four behavioral aspects in children. She recognized the appropriate behaviors of children, applied consequence and made teaching easier by breaking the instructions in parts so that kids could understand the context of the instructions. While observing the teaching style of the mentor, I realized that the students’ behavior changed when the teacher asked one child to clean the room and to put the toys in their respective places. In response, other students also reached forward to help their classmate. This incident is an example of “Ripple effect” which was put forward by a theorist Jacob Kaunin’s work (Ryan, Cooper, & Tauer, 2012). According to this Jacob Kaunin, students tend to behave in a similar fashion with their teacher in different situations so when one child misbehaves, the teacher needs to handle misbehavior in such a way that other students do not take turns to act the same way. In this regard, Kaunin’s proposed different methods such as overlapping that is the ability of the teacher to multi-task to prevent misbehaviors or using momentum as a means to remain involved in teaching despite few distractions. They can also use a Group focus as a strategy to handle discipline amongst students. The basic aim of the focus group would be to facilitate discussion amongst students who would encourage them to stay communicative. As a result, the child would stay more attentive (Kyle & Rogien, 2004). In birth setting-PK and PK3 classrooms I saw teachers are normally seen using meaningful interactive sessions so that children can open up and express themselves in front of teachers. In this regard, it can be said that I realized the teachers kept using age appropriate activities that instilled language, curiosity in toddlers and focused on engagements that built their emotional and cognitive growth. In this regard, managing diverse and multicultural students was a challenging task for the teacher. (Oers, 2012) Research indicates that education programs for teachers provide better chances of improvement in student’s behaviors, and it helps manage classroom chaos in a better way (Kayaa, Lundeenb, & Wolfgang, 2010). I observed that the teacher focused on curriculum that contained collaboration of professional assessments that were aligned at international level so that it would have a long lasting effect on children with diverse cultural background. With respect to the theoretical perspective, Skinner has the view that the classroom teaching should always be enjoyable no matter the strength of students or if students were coming from different cultural backgrounds. Children in birth-PK setting to K3 classrooms are young enough to be distracted towards playful experiments that can induce lifelong learning. Skinner made use of effective reward system in education in order to reinforce children towards progressive learning. I observed the same management behavior in the mentor who was supervising a second-grade class. The teacher gave students the title of “star of the week” if they were consistently good in his behavior. I believe this had a positive impact on the students, and they constantly strived to achieve the title. Likewise, consistently poor behavior was given a bad conduct, and this reprimanded the negative behavior in the classroom (Sonia Burnard Wells Park School and Training Centre, Essex, 2012). For PK-3 educators, it is essential for teachers and educators to keep analyzing, modifying and synthesizing their teaching style to make their practice meet excellent standards of education. I realized the mentor initiated meetings on regular intervals with her colleagues to focus on the class room based research that would help then gauge effectiveness of teaching practice. Piaget (1964) proposed a theory stating that teachers need to have the means to design an environment that fosters a relationship that promotes inventive and critical thinking that can carry out of the curriculum of learning is refined and developed with the passage of time(Danielsa & Shumow, 2003). In the end, it can be concluded that my field experience was interesting and innovative. I learnt a lot from my mentors and teachers and realized that children as young as 3-8 years can learn and develop their personalities more than the children of older age group. Thus, in this regard teachers who focus on different learning styles can manage child development in an effective way. Reference List Read More