COMMUNITY SERVICE REFLECTION PAPER 1

Community Service Reflection Paper

During my spring semester of my junior year at South Dakota State University I was an

assistant teacher in the 3 and 4-year-old lab at The Fishback Center. In this placement as an

assistant teacher I grew as an educator and participated in planning activities for the classroom

that I have never done before. In my placement I had a mentor teacher, 3 other assistant teachers,

and 4 student teachers. There were 17 children in this classroom. Within this classroom were 7

different ethnic groups and 9 different second languages where English was the primary

language. I was at this placement from 12:30-4:00 pm Monday’s and Wednesday’s.

During my time as an assistant teacher, I assisted the student teachers during small group,

set up the classroom, created lesson plans, completed developmental forms, and participated in

teacher research. Every day the student teachers had a 20-minute time to work with four children

from the class in a small group. Over the course of the semester, the small groups investigated a

particular topic that interested them. The small group that I assisted with investigated sea

creatures. The students investigated what their sea creatures ate, where they lived, and what they

looked like. The findings from the small group investigations were displayed during an event

called Celebration of Learning. From this experience, I learned how to participate in an

investigation that was child-led. The children were the ones doing the research. I think it is

important to let children discover what interests them and follow their lead at times.

There were different areas in the classroom that were changed each week by the student

teachers. I assisted in setting up those areas of the classroom and made sure the areas of the

classroom remained intact throughout the school day. I asked children different provocational

questions when they were at different areas of the classroom. This allowed the children to

expand their learning by truly thinking about what task they were performing or material they
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were manipulating. This experience helped me as an educator by being able to ask the children

questions that would expand their thinking. I was able to scaffold the children’s learning to help

them learn new information by asking them provocational questions. I learned what

provocational questions were and how they can be implemented in a classroom.

I also completed a child study while being an assistant teacher at The Fishback Center. In

this child study, I performed a pre-assessment, planned three lesson plans, and performed a post-

assessment. Based on the results of the pre-assessment, I planned three lesson plans that allowed

the child to improve in an area of learning. For this particular child, she could perform one-to-

one-correspondence, but lacked number sense. The post-assessment showed that the child

improved in recognizing and understanding numbers. This experience helped me as an educator

by giving me opportunities to lesson plan and assess how each lesson went. As an educator, I

will need to constantly assess how my students are learning and if what I am doing is working.

Another task that I had to complete as an assistant teacher was to complete an Ages and

Stages Questionnaire for a child. I chose to do my questionnaire on the same child that I picked

for the child study. I did this to gain a better understanding of where the child performed in each

developmental category. This questionnaire was completed in the general classroom to make the

assessment seem as natural as possible. From this experience I learned how to assess children

based on where they are developmentally. I learned how to perform an assessment on a child in a

natural way.

One of the bigger projects that I participated in during my time as an assistant teacher

was a teacher research project called Ramps and Balls. This teacher research project involved

inquiry based learning. With the group of assistant teachers for the 3 and 4-year-old classroom,

we developed a teacher research question that was reframed and developed with each week of
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implementing ramps and balls and observing what the children discovered about the balls and

ramps. I learned how to develop a teacher research question and I learned how to develop a

teacher research project within my own classroom. Through this process I gained a better

understanding of inquiry based learning.

All of these experiences have related to my growth as an educator. I became more aware

of ways children learn and how to assess my own teaching methods. Within my time as an

assistant teacher, I assisted the student teachers during small group, set up the classroom, created

lesson plans, completed developmental forms, and participated in teacher research. I am now a

better educator because of these experiences.