Reflecting on a classroom experience - "B"

When I went into Miss Miller’s first grade class at Pinewoods Elementary, I got the chance to use technology to help her students learn. Everyday there is a set amount of time for center activities, which are associated with reading and writing skills. One of the centers was the computer center, where I helped the children log on and play reading games. The game that I thought was the most interesting was the ‘name the body part’ game, which had the students picking out of a bank of words the correct body part. The word ‘arm’ was among them and the student would click on it and drag it to the picture of the person and place it where the arm is. Another game that the students were playing was a fill in the blank game and it allowed the student to choose which tense of the verb fit. For example, one sentence would say something like ‘Billy is ______ for the bus’, The choices would be ‘waits’, ‘waited’, or ‘waiting’. It got more challenging as the game went on and I noticed that most of the students avoided this game.
I learned from this experience about the different types of reading materials that can be used to teach an exercise. At the computer center, the children can work independently and are encouraged to help their neighbor if they ask. It was neat to see how technology has evolved since my days in elementary school, because the only computer games we had were Number Munchers or Word Munchers. Some of the challenges that I noticed were that some students repeated the same game two or three times during their center time. This won’t help them learn new lessons and it is hard for the teacher to catch the students doing this. I was able to tell the students to try three different games during their center time, because it was important they learned many different lessons. Of course, since I was the ‘helper’, everyone listened and wanted me to watch them do their exercises. I don’t think they realized how much they could learn from the simple games, but as a future teacher I saw the material trying to be taught. As a learner, I found that I still am new in the whole using computers in education. I’m amazed each time I see a new game, program, or website that gears itself to teaching students. I’m anxious to use technology in my own classroom.