On October 12, 2016, I attended Mr. Johnson’s classroom. He is the 5th grade science teacher at Lyons Elementary. I arrived at 8:00am, staying till 10:00am, and witnessing two different classes. Upon inspection, I noticed his class was a little different than I had seen before. He changed his classroom from lecture and book style classroom to a rotation style. The rotation is based off of a day system where each day the child rotates from one station to another. This occurs over the time of four days. The fifth day or Friday they do an overall review and test.

            The first station is a project area where the children brain storm creative ideas they can do to represent the item they are talking about during the week. I watched as this group of three girls and two boys stared at their papers for a minute and then began excitedly blurting out ideas to their fellow group members. This week’s topic was erosion. They used colored paper to draw and explain things that are happening in their pictures. It was great to see the kids allowed to be creative and I feel they would better understand the concept because of it.

            The second station, which was the one I helped with, was about reading comprehension. I helped the children as they read through a book and answered four questions related to the subject. We read about how weathering effected various types of landforms. I taught the children to look at the questions first and make sure they understand what the question wants so when they are reading they will be aware what to look for. It did help with both classes I worked with. Doing this with the group and explaining out things that confused them led to them getting finished with time to spare that they used to take quizzes online.

            The third station was a research station. They focused on researching about the subject and had to write a one-page report about what information they found. I love this idea because it gets the students involved in their education and teaches them valuable research skills that they will use throughout life. Looking over the things the kids did they certainly rose to the occasion.

            The last station was the quiz and game section. There they took practice quizzes. The questions were mid-level material. This was to get the students ready for GMAS. After they finished their quizzes and if they did well it allowed them to earn tokens towards playing educational games. This is a nice incentive to help keep the students motivated.

            Summary: I was super impressed with the job the groups do for the students. They are, in my opinion, more impactful than the traditional class structure. This structure not only helps children learn the material, but also teaches them self-sufficiency which is a great tool to be learned at such a young age. Too many students of today rely on a teacher giving them a worksheet and them just memorizing it for a test only to forget it two days later. When a students have to ask questions, find answers, and communicate with others, it makes the learning process more interesting and memorable.