Field Experience Paper
Field Experience Paper
Field Experience Paper
Michelle Quibuyen
This paper discusses the different teaching strategies I learned about by both observing
Mrs. Fanucchi in her kindergarten class, as well as the interview with Mrs. Fanucchi after the
observation. One idea I was able to take away from Mrs. Fanucchi was that she focuses on
getting to know her students on a personal level, but she also tries to make connections with all
her students. This paper also discusses how technology plays a big role in Mrs. Fanucchi’s
information about classroom management and practices that help Mrs. Fanucchi to inspire,
motivate and instruct her students. As a future educator, I will be taking what I have learned
about observing this classroom and try to implement some practices into my future classroom.
Description of the Classroom and the Lesson Observed During Visit
Elementary School, a PreK-6 school in Bakersfield, CA. The city of Bakersfield has many
schools that are considered to be Title 1 and Shirley Lane Elementary School is one of them.
According to Shirley Lane Elementary School’s SARC Report, the school has a large
school also has a large Hispanic or Latino population, with those students accounting for 87.9%
of total enrollment. The percentage of English learners is 42.3%, which is fairly high. Mrs.
Fanucchi’s student to teacher ratio is 23:1, with the total enrollment of kindergarten students
being at 114.
I have personally known Mrs. Fanucchi, for five years as a colleague and have admired
her as a teacher, so I was very excited and eager to spend the day in her classroom observing her
interaction with the students, as well as her lessons. Although Mrs. Fanucchi has only been
teaching for three years, she takes great pride in her students and her classroom and sets high
expectations for every student who enters. Her classroom is filled with bright colors and is
organized very neatly. She has covered every inch of her walls with student projects and
assignments.
I observed Mrs. Fanucchi’s class on Wednesday and every morning she greets her
students at the door and notifies her students that they will be starting on the carpet, like any
other day. She starts the lesson with phonics and then goes right into syllables. Mrs. Fanucchi
creatively thinks of words as the students figure out how many syllables are in that word. After
she reviews the syllables, she quickly reviews old phonic lessons the students have previously
learned and makes a game out of it. She uses her interactive document camera to flash their sight
words on the projector screen as all the students read the word. At around 8:15 a.m., her ELL
students leave the classroom to go to intervention. The rest of the students then have an overview
of all their sight words starting from September up until April. She does this using flash cards,
and while doing so, she keeps eye contact with the group of students to see if the students are
participating. If the students are not participating, she keeps the word on the screen as they break
down the word using the different strategies they have learned, i.e. breaking the words apart,
sounding each letter, etc. Through the sight word review, students first spelled it the words on
their own and the students were able to ask their Amazon Echo Plus, Alexa, how to spell the
specific word while they looked over their own spelling. After her phonics lesson, the students
grabbed their iPad and started to work on Lexia, an online program that focuses on elementary
literacy instruction. As the students worked on Lexia, Mrs. Fanucchi walked around her
classroom and helped students who were having trouble with their levels. The students worked
After her students were finished with Lexia, her students that left for intervention came
back to the classroom and all her students sat back on the carpet. She read a story to her students
and explained that it went along with the other story they read the other day. On Wednesdays,
the students usually write about the book that Mrs. Fanucchi just read, but since it was
Administrative Assistant Day, she decided to have the students write a letter to the school
administrative assistants to show their appreciation. In order to show what school secretaries do,
she played a video on YouTube that showed an example. After the students watched the video,
the students started on their letter to their secretaries as Mrs. Fanucchi kept an eye out on her
students finished their phonics worksheet and letter, Mrs. Fanucchi differentiated her instruction
and called different reading groups to read with her. Mrs. Fanucchi’s aide came in at around
10:15 A.M., and also instructed a reading group. There are four stages they complete in a reading
group. First, the students and the instructor read together. Second, the reader and instructor read
again, but look and stop at words the students do not understand. Third, students read to each
other and fourth, one student reads to the instructor and classmate, while others listen. As Mrs.
Fanucchi continued her reading groups, she would look up every now and then to see if her
students were staying on task and checked on her students’ behavior. During this time, her
students worked independently, and if students needed help, other students were there to guide
them.
After lunch, students walked back in and went straight to the carpet to cool down. Mrs.
Fanucchi gave them one minute to relax and quickly after, they start with talking about the
calendar and sang songs about the days of the week and the months of the year. Afterwards, they
started working on math problems. The students were working on subtraction and addition.
Students grabbed their white boards and Mrs. Fanucchi put up problems on the white board one
by one for the students to solve. She chose a mini teacher to go up to the board and solved the
problem. After solving the problem on the board, another student went up to their Amazon Echo
Plus and asked Alexa what the answer was – for example, “Alexa, what is eight minus two?”.
Following this strategy, the students went back to their seats and Mrs. Fanucchi vocalized a
problem without the students seeing the number, just hearing it. Students then completed the
problem on their white board and held it up for Mrs. Fanucchi to see. Quickly after doing so, the
students took out their math workbook and complete the assigned page. Mrs. Fanucchi walked
around to see if any of her students were struggling and if they were she always told them, “I
Towards the end of the day, Mrs. Fanucchi let her students finish the letters and drawings
to the secretaries. She ended up taking her students to the office to deliver their letters and after
they came back, the students sat back down on the carpet. Mrs. Fanucchi then told them how
proud she was of them and pointed out great behavior and also listed the great behavior they
Teacher Interview
1. How do you think your class went? What do you think worked well? And what do you
reading. The students reading groups, they were participating and saw growth
2. What do you think your strengths are? And how can you build on your strengths?
3. Did you let the students struggle with difficult questions? Or did you step in and lead
a. No difficult questions for them. One difficult questions – think of a topic sentence.
a. Learned that differentiated reading groups are improving and strategies that are
a. I don’t believe in diversity all my kids are the same. It’s cool because you get a lot
of culture and diversity in your classroom and incorporate them in your lessons.
Want them to have respect about different cultures and diversity. Celebrate
6. What is your model of success and how do you fit it into your classroom?
a. “Don’t give up!” You work for your success. They know what practice and review
7. Describe how you would work to create a learning environment that is welcoming and
increasingly diverse.
8. How do you seek opportunities to improve your learning environment to meet the needs
of all students?
9. How has diversity and culture played a role in shaping your teaching style?
family – different but the same. Tells students she loves them and that she cares
about them. Diversity plays a role, they learn to respect – we all have the same
10. Were you ever placed on a team where you or someone on that team did not see eye-to-
a. Still carry the situation as a professional – just talk about students. Keep it
11. Please tell us about an experience that you had with a student. What did you learn about
yourself?
a. Routine based classroom – student comes from a background that not all student
can be treated equally but you need to give the students what they need. Some
12. Have you ever had to utilize your multicultural skills to solve a problem? If so, how?
a. Yes, students who do not speak English – I can relate. ELD learners exactly what
they need because I’m an ELD learner. Use a lot of visuals, some students do not
Through my observation and interview, I have learned that Mrs. Fanucchi continuously
tries to inspire and motivate all her students. Mrs. Fanucchi was able to accomplish much
without an aide and has personalized her teaching strategies to meet the needs of all her students.
Mrs. Fanucchi’s constant communication with parents, grandparents or guardians help her to
incorporate methods into her every day teaching. I realized that Mrs. Fanucchi does not
discriminate or have any biases towards her students. She absolutely gives her students equal
opportunity and gives “everyone an equal chance to receive an education” (Spring, 116). In
giving everyone an equal opportunity in her classroom, Mrs. Fanucchi does not show any
favoritism towards her students. She randomly picks names by choosing a stick, or has students
pick out the names from the cup. She allows everyone an opportunity to be the “mini teacher”
and asks students if they have already been chosen that day or not to see give everyone the same
opportunity.
I also observed how dependent Mrs. Fanucchi is on technology and how this motivates
her students. She uses her interactive document camera every single day and also uses her Echo
Plus to provide the correct answer and set timers. The students also use their iPads to complete
the Lexia program and she uses her watch to keep track of time. Students love using the
technology especially when it came to go up to ask Alexa the problem or simply asking Alexa to
Her positive reinforcement in her classroom also helped her to succeed and I have also
learned that from this experience. Allowing the students to know that it is okay to make mistakes
and tells them that if they make mistakes it is okay, we can also start over and fix it. Mrs.
Fanucchi always tells her students that she believes in them and that she knows that they can do
into my lesson. Mrs. Fanucchi explained that although she treats her students equally, she
emphasizes different cultural backgrounds in her classroom and celebrates each and every single
one of their differences. She wants to allow students to grow and respect the different cultures
and diversity in her classroom. She makes sure the students demonstrate ‘self-awareness,
confidence, family pride and positive social identities” (Spring, 189) in her classroom. She
promotes diversity in her classroom even if there are many Hispanic or Latino students in her
class. She wants students to “recognize the diversity of people in the world” (Spring, 190).
Learning these different strategies and methods from Mrs. Fanucchi has definitely helped me to