Rainforest Lesson Reflection

The classroom that I had the pleasure of working with was great because I have worked with them the entire semester for my practicum.  I was present in Mrs. Rhoads’ third grade classroom two or three times a week at McCoy Elementary.  However since it was in Aztec and thirty miles in the other direction I chose to carefully plan my time there.  Mrs. Rhoads gave me wonderful support and I was able to take the reins in her classroom completely.  She rarely left the room but she let me control her classroom and I was free to work with the students on creating a rainforest.  I had an absolute wonderful time in this class working on their rainforest project.  We are planning on finishing this project before Christmas break.  Currently the students have done a wonderful job recreating plant and animal life from the rainforest.  It was an educational opportunity for us all as we learned the names of all various layers of the rainforest and its inhabitants.  The creativity of the children is definitely one area that I did not have to worry about.  Once I gave them a project about drawing or thinking about creating a save the rainforest campaign they were off and running with it.  There were definitely a lot of positives about this lesson because Mrs. Rhoads had done this before when she taught in Kirtland.  Therefore she gave me a lot of ideas as to what I could do for my rainforest lesson. I knew that I wanted to recreate a rainforest whether it is in her classroom or in the hallway.  When I presented the lesson to her she was ecstatic.  Mrs. Rhoads shared with me pictures from her previous students and their work.  That only made me feel a great sense of excitement and hoping it could be as elaborate as her last one.