My Field Experience

Introduction Educational psychology is a very important course for future educators. it really prepares you for obstacles you will encounter in your future classroom. Throughout this class I have learned strategies for teaching and had the opportunity to apply them throughout my field experience. Three topics we covered in this course were motivation, learning styles, and teacher efficacy. Throughout this essay I would like to give you insight into how I came across these topics while completing my field experience. Also in this assessment I will talk about my personal experience with my students and the obstacles I encountered along the way. In a addition to these obstacles I would like to talk about how I overcame them and learned a lot

Throughout the semester I attended Oasis on Mondays and Thursdays. This is important to note because your experience at Oasis varies depending on which day of the week you attend. On Mondays we did not have very many tutors. When we don’t have very many tutors that usually means you are going to have more kids in your group, which means your attention has to be dispersed and divided up even more. Some Mondays I had 5 or 6 kids in my group. This didn’t happen a lot, but it happened. Also the work that we do on Monday is different than the work we do on Thursday. My student’s teacher would give them a packet at the beginning of the week. This packet was enough homework for the entire week. It would usually consist of 4 work sheets. Two would deal with math and the other would deal with reading and writing. When the boys first arrived at Oasis they would come sit down at the table, and we would chat about their day. That is a very important part of tutoring these boys. When they feel comfortable, and get the chance to tell you all about their day that lets them know you care and they are more open to listening to you in return. Plus these are first graders and they have been sitting in a desk all day doing schoolwork, the last thing they want to do after school is more schoolwork! After we chatted about their day we would read the books in our tutoring bags for 15 minutes. Then I would give them a piece of paper that I wrote four questions on for them to answer in complete sentences. After they answered their sentences we would work on their penmanship and sometimes I would reward them by letting each of them pick a word to play hangman with. They loved that, and it helped them work on their spelling skills. Then it was time to do math flashcards, and site word flash cards. It was always interesting to see which kids were better at math and which were stronger at language arts