Very First Day of Fieldwork

Yesterday at St. Josephs we met our fourth grade class that we will be working with for fieldwork. It's a fairly small class with some students on different academic levels. It's also a very diverse classroom and one student has a learning disability. It was very good to know who the students are that will be needing extra attention so we can plan our accommodations better for our lesson plans. The first day we were instructed to do a getting to know you activity with all of the students. The students set themselves up into groups and our group of teacher candidates rotated every 10 minutes. Each group of students got the opportunity to participate in each of our activities. My group had the students create their own medieval times banner and write the first letter of their names really big, like they would do in medieval times. They then were asked to write on the back one thing they already know about medieval times, one thing they want to know, and one interesting fun fact about themselves. After they were finished with the writing, they got the opportunity to decorate their banners. We told them we had a surprise for them what we were going to do with the banners when they are finished. When it is our groups turn to teach, we are going to hang the banners on a string and hand it across the classroom so they can be proud of their work! The students seemed to highly enjoy this activity and it helped a lot seeing where the students stand in terms of knowing about medieval times. These students surprised me about how much they knew. They are all brilliant young kids and I cannot wait to work with them and teach them more. I am very excited to start actually teaching them about the battle of hastings in a couple weeks  and I think our group will do a great job.