And…That’s a Wrap! – Blog 9

Moorea C -

Hey everyone! I hope you’re having an amazing day 🙂 This week I wrapped up my research by teaching the 3rd graders! Unfortunately, I got pretty sick right after I finished teaching and was not able to do much the rest of the week, but I would like to talk a bit about my overall experience being in the classroom.

I think it’s safe to say that this experience has truly been a very positive and fulfilling one to have and I have learned so much throughout the whole process. I was able to get a glimpse into what my future career will look like and also start figuring out what type of teacher I want to be. Teaching the 3rd graders was really interesting because I was able to talk to them a little more in depth about the environment because they were able to understand and make connections easier than the 2nd graders were. I ended up having a discussion with the 3rd graders about different ways that they could reuse materials in their own lives at home. This actually wasn’t part of my lesson plan, but was really nice and helpful in allowing them to see how the concepts we were talking about in class could be applied to their day to day lives. The students talked about things like how they reuse plastic grocery bags in their house to clean up messes and how they use scraps of cardboard and paper to create their own fun art projects. I really enjoyed this part of the day because I was given the opportunity to go through a more student led discussion that I wouldn’t have been able to do as well with the second graders because of their age.

One thing that was also different with the 3rd graders was that they asked a lot of questions that were sometimes a bit hard to answer usually because I was a bit caught off-guard by them. I won’t go into detail about what they asked but I will say that I definitely never thought some of those questions would have been brought up, but I suppose that is just one of the things that comes with teaching younger students  😂

Overall I had a really good time teaching my last two classes and can’t wait to share more about the post-test statistics next week!

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Comments:

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    miles_hansen
    So glad you enjoyed the experience! The random questions are pretty interesting, and teaching has tends to have lots of fun little surprises. That's what makes it such a unique career to be in.
    April 14, 2025 at 7:15 am - Reply
    zoey_b
    That sounds like a really rewarding experience for you! How did you handle the unexpected questions and go about answering them?
    April 16, 2025 at 12:58 pm - Reply
    theodore_d
    Wow Moorea! I am so glad that you had such a positive experience with this teaching research! I was not expecting 2nd and 3rd graders to actually have differences in ability in understanding and making connections, since, to me, the two grades seems so similar. What will you do with your project for these remaining two weeks now that the research portion is complete?
    April 17, 2025 at 6:02 pm - Reply
    skylar_c
    It's amazing about how insightful kids can be and so interesting to see their fresh perspective on everything. Do you prefer having discussions with the students like this or leading a lesson?
    April 19, 2025 at 11:47 am - Reply
    James Pierce
    It sounds like your time spent teaching these kids were really fun! It's always nice to know that the career you're going into is the right one, so it's great that this experience affirmed your choice of profession is one that you really do enjoy!
    April 20, 2025 at 1:00 am - Reply
    james_pi
    It seems you had a really nice time teaching these kids! It's always nice knowing that the career you're going into is something you'll enjoy, so it's great that this project has affirmed that teaching is what you want to do! Though I am really curious, what question do you think caught you the most off-guard from your students?
    April 20, 2025 at 1:37 am - Reply
    moorea_c
    Thanks for the question Zoey! Honestly, I just answered them as best I could and then tried to connect the answers back to the original conversation to help refocus each student.
    April 20, 2025 at 9:56 pm - Reply
    moorea_c
    Great questions Skylar! Honestly I really enjoyed both so I don't think I had much of a preference, but it was definitely fun to have the class discussion and hear all of their thoughts as they came up with them!
    April 27, 2025 at 12:35 pm - Reply
    moorea_c
    Thanks for the question Theo! For the remaining time I have just been looking at my statistics from the post-tests as well as reviewing all of my research and interview data from my project to look at how to best answer my research question as a whole.
    April 27, 2025 at 12:36 pm - Reply
    moorea_c
    Thanks for the question James! I had one student basically ask me if they needed to go out and buy a lot of extra food in order to create waste for composting. They had prefaced the question by talking about what would happen if they ate all of their lunch and didn't have anything to compost and I had explained that was completely okay and not a problem, but I think they were just a little bit confused.
    April 27, 2025 at 7:29 pm - Reply

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