Week 3: Positive and Engaged Learning

This week in my service learning, I tried to focus on the different prompts of things to write about that happened within the classroom. This week in reading we had our workbooks that had 3 different articles that we can work on that day. One was about whales, the others were dolphins, and wolves. The class got to decided which animal we used, and what activity went with it. She has a lot of different things in which she lets the students choose what they learn.  She give them options so that way they will remain attentive and pay attention to the lesson or activity.

She also has showed her class that she recognizes their work they have done by offering prizes, and positive comments. Today while I was in class we were working on reading, and she everyone read in this race. The students did the race 3x, and every time someone beat there last score the class gave them a round of applause. She also keeps points over the week and the table with the best score get to pick a prize. She always leaves comments on homework, and helps them when they struggle. She also tells her class that their homework doesn't have to be perfect .She just wants to see that they have tried to write something, or tried to do a math problem.She really wants them to try and problem solve with their homework, even if they don't get it right, she has them focus on trying to figure it out and putting forth the work.

Lastly she provides a safe space for her students. She does this by making sure there is no negative talk about students in her classroom or about other students in the school. If she has a problem with a student she will pull them aside and talk to them one on one instead of doing it in front of the class. One of the students came in with a hat on, which was against the schools rules. She kindly asked the boy to take it off. The boy pushed back and wouldn't remove his hat. Instead of fighting with him with everyone watching, she got the students to start on their composition book prompt and walked over and knelt by the boy. She whispered and talked with him, and the boy finally took off his hat. 

This provides a loving environment because she didn't embarrass the boy in front of his class and his friends. She acted like it was no big deal so the other students wouldn't make the situation worse.