Working with the Children-Lab 6

I learned many things about young children while I was working at St. Mary’s. One thing that I learned that is vital when you are teaching is the amount of energy that they have. In order to keep up with them a high intensity or high energy level is needed in order to be able to teach them effectively. Teaching with high energy will grab the kids attention and keep them focused on the task or game that’s going on. I felt that the game that we played called “popcorn popper” was very appropriate for the students at St. Mary’s. They were all able to participate together and everyone seemed to have a good time. It also worked well because the children learned how to throw and catch better. They learned how to throw better because they had to use the proper technique to get the ball over the wall barrier, and they had to catch better because they had to learn how to catch balls that come at them from different angles. Some activities that were not as appropriate would have been the kicking game that we played because everyone was not given an equal opportunity to kick the ball. Another factor in this was that some of the kids might have gotten discouraged because they were not able to make a goal like the other children in the class.

While I was working with the PRE K students I learned that there are many alterations that need to be made in order to teach them. They are not able to communicate very well, and are often unable to tell you exactly what they mean when you are trying to get information out of the. I found this very hard because with some of the kids I was unable to understand them, and as a result of this I was unable to help them. By not being able to help them I felt that I had in some way failed. I did not like this and hope that in the future I am better able to learn how to communicate better with children of this age group. The PRE K students also do not yet have a lot of the movement abilities that the older kids have. I expected this to happen and changed the games in order to suit their abilities. I liked working with the younger children because it teaches me how to work with the different age groups. I do not plan to get a job working with this age group when I start looking for jobs, but if I get an opportunity to work with them I would not overlook the idea. I think that working with kids of this age would be very rewarding because they are nice to teach. If you work with older students, they tend to get lippy and give you problems, whereas with this age group they just tend be more willing to learn and participate in the games that you are having them do.