Final Reflection

For our reading and language arts activities, I was able to identify many different struggle areas for the students. For children who did not do well on my activity, I would think back to the ages and stages of the students and try and find what content they understand the best, so that we can start their and build up to the activity being given. For example, for my infant 1 and infant 2 classes, if a student was not able to put alphabet in order and seems to be struggling with identifying letters, we would stop the activity and begin an activity that includes students identifying their letters and the corresponding sound. This is because student's have to have a strong understanding of the letters and identifying them before they put their letters in order. In a similar way, students must have a strong understanding of letter sounds and stringing letter sounds together before they try and create word families. Because of this, I always assessed the students understanding of their alphabet by having them sort their alphabet before moving onto word families. It is important to backtrack to where the student has mastered the content before and slowly move forward to new content that the student may not be understanding, this way the student does not get left behind and there is not a build up of confusion around the content area.

Being a part of this trip, I have learned an enormous amount about myself as a teacher and what I am capable of doing. Before this trip, I had never had the experience of creating a lesson plan, implementing it, and changing it multiple times so that it is appropriate for a variety of grade levels. Now, however, I have learned the importance of ages and stages and how critical it is that you create lesson plans that are appropriate to the student's grade level. There were several times where the lesson I created was too easy or too hard for the students, and I had to adjust my lesson accordingly to meet the needs of the student. It is very easy for a lesson to become unproductive to the students if it is not in their zone of development, therefor it is critical that lessons challenge the students but are not over their heads. If the lesson is too difficult, you may have to go back and assess the last thing the student's understand to help build on it. The next step in helping develop my teaching skills is to use the information I have learned while in Belize and apply it to my field experience in the block and my internship. Not only has teaching in Belize helped me learn how to connect better with students from another country, but it has taught more about how to adapt instruction for students in general and the importance of making lesson plans that are appropriate to a student's learning. If I had not participated in this trip, I would have never known what it feels like to be in the minority in another society. Having this feeling is what is going to be essential in allowing me understand the perspective of students who come from another country and providing them with the resources they need to feel as comfortable as possible in my classroom. If I had not gone on this trip, I would never be able to fully help a student from another country because I wouldn't know what their situation felt like.