Marquetta Strait February13, 2013 CU Life Reflection: 2

For my second experience to Mitchell Math and Science Elementary School, I was really looking forward to being in my classes. The school is very welcoming and offers many opportunities for the students, such as the Green Heart Program, which is an agriculture and gardening program.

When I walked into Mr. Wingards fourth grade class, I was warmly greeted by the students with a Good morning Ms. Strait. In their class, they were discussing appropriate writing prompts for their writing time that day. They eventually came up with How does yoga support your life? The

writing prompt is associated to the schools fitness program that offers yoga for the students. The students really enjoy the yoga program. Before the students started writing on their prompt, they had a guest speaker. The speaker was Mr. Gerry, a yoga teacher. Mr. Gerry is also a great writer and has written many textbooks where college students study how he writes.

The students were instructed to come up with three great main idea points of how yoga supports life with their groups. I walked around the classroom and heard how the students discussed their points. Some of the most common points were that they felt more relaxed during yoga, more calm, felt challenged, and yoga provided balance in their lives. The students provided great feedback and in sharing their ideas with the class, they increased their options for points that they could discuss within their paper. After the students shared their ideas, Mr. Gerry gave an overview of yoga and stated that they could do yoga stretches while being seated. After which, the whole class, including

myself, started the yoga exercises, which was most needed on my side. Towards the end of my time in the class, the students usually ask me about college life. These students are so intelligent and all geared towards attending college. They have goals, such as becoming a veterinarian, cosmetologist, engineer, to an architect.

In Ms. Blacks third grade class, she had me to teach a lesson on descriptive writing. She gave me an outline and had her I-Pad set to record me while I taught her students. She had the students split into two groups and while I worked with one group, she worked with the other group in reading strategies. The lesson that I taught was teaching students how it is important to provide details and descriptions to describe something. I introduced the subject by having the students describe to me how a beach looks. Many of the students described a place with a lot of sand, a large ocean, geese, many people, and salty water. I then told them that they had engaged in giving descriptions. I then gave the students three different pieces of candy, one at a time. The first candy was an Altoid mint, second a gum drop, and lastly a Valentines chocolate heart. After each candy, the students were to write their descriptions in their journal. After a few minutes, then we would discuss the candys descriptions as a group. The students really enjoyed the activity and so did I. Ms. Black said that I did an awesome job working with the groups and it was obvious that the students were really engaged with what I was discussing. This second experience was very enjoyable because I knew what to expect and really looked forward to working with the students and teachers.