Introduction

Hello fellow TE 402 bloggers! This is such a new experience for me! I am really excited to share my experiences with everyone. I will use this first post as an introduction to the kind of classroom I am in for my placement.

I am placed in a 1st/2nd grade split in a Montessori classroom. Before this year, I was not familiar at all with the Montessori style. It is a very interesting and non-traditional way of teaching, and I am skeptical if the teaching style really works. In my classroom, the students are free to make choices about which learning activities they participate in. All of the students have "work plans," which sort of spells out exactly which activities they can choose from for the week. The students usually work in pairs or in groups, and they rarely do individual work. The second graders are encouraged to help the first graders, which helps reinforce their content knowledge.My students come from all different backgrounds and cultures. One teacher told me that a lot of students get school of choice options in order to come to the Montessori school.

I go into my placement every Monday and Wednesday in the afternoon. During this time, I see independent reading time, group work from each student's work plan, some social studies, and a lot of classroom management (since the students are so young and restless). When I am in the classroom, I interact with the students a great deal. I usually do the social studies work with the second graders, and recently I have been assessing different students letter/sound fluency and sight words individually. It has been a great learning experience so far, and I can't wait to share more experiences with the blogging world!