Journal Entry #1
January 30th, 2015

         Today was my first day being in Mrs. Nuttall's Kindergarten class. I absolutely loved it. When I arrived the kids were in their rotation, which included math activities and reading activities. It was neat because Mrs Nuttall was doing testing with the kids one on one and so I was able to observe testing. I cant remember what the testing was exactly called, It was something like the DRA...or RDA, I will ask her again. It was really awesome to see how much these kindergartners knew! Throughout class I was able to see kids read words and write their own addition problems and solve them! That blew me away to think that they are so far ahead compared to where I was in Kindergarten. I didn't read until 1st grade and Mrs. Nuttall told me that by the end of kindergarten now, kids should be able to read. I noticed how fast paced the average kindergartens daily schedule is. Every activity was only like 20 minutes long and the teacher had to get everything in, in only 3 hours.
        During the time I was in the class room a 4th grade class came to the kindergartners to read with them. That very neat to observe. The 4th graders really helped the kids read. I thought it was a great activity to do to help the kindergartners learn. One of the 4th graders just moved from Mexico and so she did not speak much English, so the 4th grade teacher was having Mrs Nuttall test this girl because Mrs Nuttall is a lot more familiar with that level of testing, because the girl is on a kindergarten level. It was interesting to see, because the girl is very smart, but the language barrier is not letting it show.
        Mrs. Nuttall was always busy, she was always interacting with the kids whether during group time or rotation. She told me she has a lot of paperwork at home to do because there is not time during class for her to do it. I loved this about her because she was so focused on the kids and teaching them. Everything she did had a reason, which was awesome. Some examples are, she had all the kids tell her what word they learned today, which was "from," she also had them use it in a sentence before they ran off onto the play ground. All of the songs she sang while cleaning up had to do with some sort of learning. I am so excited to keep learning from Mrs. Nuttall and to see what I can apply in my class when I am a teacher.