Ms. Brown's Class February 8th

Today in Ms. Brown's class, we were studying alligators.

As far as I can tell, all of the students in the class are native English speakers. They do all read at different levels and because they go to school in 2017, there are lots of options for them to fit and challenge their reading abilities. Several hundred years ago, the students would have only had access to one level of book but in order to accommodate and help out different ability levels, the students had different options for reading levels for their books. There are a few students that struggle with reading so Ms. Brown sent them one by one to read out loud to me and I helped them figure out the trickier words.

After they finished reading the book, their next task was to fill out these sheets about alligators, identifying a main idea and three key details about alligators from the book they'd read.

This assignment was kind of tricky for the students because they didn't readily understand what was meant by the "main idea" so I helped them brainstorm some ideas to put there.
After they finished this assignment, they cut their sheets and glued them onto green paper to make alligators.

This class has also been influenced by Brown V Board of Education because the class isn't made up of just kids of one skin tone. The students might have differences in ethnicity, but they all get to learn together in the same classroom. 

I didn't get any pictures of this, but Ms. Brown recently was able to get a lot of new STEM games with the idea of creating something that could accomplish a certain task. One of the games involved making a raft that could hold 4 people for twenty seconds and another was about making a water tight roof. Ms. Brown said the students get really excited about those games and it's really fun for them to practice those. This is an example to me of the impact of Sputnik because after the Russians beat us into space, there's been a big push for STEM education in schools. Ms. Brown mentioned in the 25+ years she's been a teacher, she's seen higher and higher standards for math learning each year and that this year, the math that her first graders are expected to grasp is something that wouldn't have been introduced for a few more years.

I am grateful to be able to be in a teacher in time when students of different abilities and ethnicities can learn together in the same classroom. I am also grateful that STEM skills are still being pushed and practiced because I think it's really important to stretch children's brains in that way as we prepare future innovators.