Reflections of a First Grade Intern

For this blog post I will be talking about being an intern in a first grade class and reflecting on some experiences I have had in the class.

I have been an intern in my first grade class for 9 weeks, and I am enjoying every minute learning from my mentor teacher and learning from the kids in my class. Each student is very unique in his or her own way. Some are short, some are the height of a normal first grader and some make me feel short because they are getting close to my height. A really cool thing I have seen in my class is how smart the kids are for being so young. I remember when I when I was in first grade, they are moving at a much faster pace no then I did when I was younger. Some of the kids were able to do small multiplication (ex. 1 x 1), which I did not start learning until third grade. Experiencing how smart the kids are is something I love reflecting on because I am getting to be apart of the kid’s education and it’s special getting to be apart of that.  Of course every classroom has its flaws and my class is no different. One thing about my class that I think helps my kids a lot is that my teacher is young, full of energy and always open to new ideas from different teachers and even from the kids. While learning about surveys the kids were sitting on the carpet taking a survey on the smart board. Instead of just the normal, “What is your favorite color?” survey, she made it interesting by making it silly, like asking, ”If you could paint the whole school a color, what color would you paint it, blue or red?” The kids went crazy for that, they thought it was so fun and loved being able to think about something that would not normally be aloud. I have had many great experiences, the ones I have put here are only some of the ones I have had in the few weeks I have been there and I am looking forward to talking about the other ones I have through out the rest of the year.