FieldBlog 4: Bryden Elementary- Visit 2

I have only been to Bryden Elementary School two times, but I absolutely love it. The staff and teachers are so friendly and the students are absolutely adorable. I love being able to interact with the students and watching them learn. I think that Bryden is a great school, and the children are lucky to be able to attend a school like that. I am in a second grade classroom, and like I said before, the kids are absolutely adorable, but this week I was trying to observe how well the students were engaged and focused. Now, I have been wondering, is it a challenge to keep little kids focused while learning and what is the best way to keep these children engaged? I have not yet found my answer to this question, but hopefully in the following weeks I will begin to see this answer in my observations. This question came into my mind when I was observing the second graders in their science class, and a thought ran through my head from something that we discussed in class, which was are students really engaged in the activity or are they just participating? The second graders have a science test coming up so their teacher prepared a review game for the students to prepare for that test. While observing this, I noticed that a lot of the students were not really focusing on what the teacher was reviewing, nor were they really listening to her, rather they were impatiently waiting for their turn to go up to the board and choose a question for the class. In my opinion, it seemed that the students were having a hard time becoming engaged with this review game. One technique that I did notice that the teacher was using in attempt to keep the students focused was gecko time. And yes, there was literally a pet gecko in the classroom. After the review game, if the students had good behavior, which some did not, they were allowed to hold and pet the gecko. After science class, the students had snack time and Bison time. During Bison, some of the students go see the intervention specialist or do other work that they have not completed. This week during Bison, Ms. Mock was holding reading conferences with the students. She had a few students read a part of their book to her, and she was evaluating them. I did not know that that was something that teachers still did, but I do recall having reading conferences when I was in elementary school. Overall, I found this second visit to be more of a learning experience than the first visit.