Lab Two: Reaction

During my visit to St. Mary's my peers and I were instructed to observe two children that I have come to call Nicole and Andrew as they demonstrated the skills of running, galloping, and hoping. The two students performed these skills during and activity set up by my peer Justen. Nicole seemed to demonstrate the movement skills more proficiently than Andrew. In fact I thought that she did quite a bit better than most of her class mates. Andrew seemed as though he did not quite realize how to perform these skills even though I believe they come from the same grade. I contributed this to the development stage at which each child is at. That possibly Nicole is just ahead of Andrew when it comes to these skills. This though is just an inference and cannot be known for sure; there are just too many variables.
The teaching methods employed by my peers were quite good. I noticed while teaching especially in Justen's game he knelt down to get on the children's level and explained the game a term that the children were able to understand. Dressing up also helped gain the children's interest. I noticed this predominately in Bree's group. Her and her peers dressed like pirates and the children seemed to magnetize toward them.
The experience I had teaching had ups and downs. I felt as though I had a strong beginning, which my professor seconded, but as the game went on it began to fall a part. I did a simple tag game that I modified for a pre-k environment. Teaching pre-k can be quite frustrating for a beginner teacher. I found that my flaws were that I took little things for granite. An example of this was that children that young do not understand the concept of running in a straight line is the simplest way to get to one point, or that once at that point is reached they are now safe. Once I realized this I immediately stopped the game and explained these little instructions that I left out. This helped the students understand the game better. Also during my game many of the parents came to pick up their children. This immediately destroyed the number of children I had in my game. My teacher said that he could tell I was let down by this and told me to keep a positive outlook on things, because children pick up negativity.
This was a great learning experience for me, I wish to keep on learning and by doing so better myself as a teacher.