Due to lingering field placement and Martin Luther King Day, I have only been out to my classroom once this semester. I am assistant teaching in a first grade classroom in Lansing School District, and really enjoy the time I spend there and the experience I am acquiring. The kids I work with have taught me a ton last semester, and I have no doubts that they will continue to teach me more and more as I teach them as well over the course of the next semester. Because the district places a huge emphasis on literacy and language arts in the first grade curriculum, that and math are the two main subjects I see in the classroom, but my teacher has offered to implement science and social studies into her schedule for this semester. I haven’t seen anything relating to either of these two subjects as of yet, but my CT told me that she will work to schedule science into the daily plan every other Monday. For January and February, balls and ramps will be the focus for science, and for April and May, there will a unit covering plants. Last semester I saw a little science in the classroom, such as the daily weather charts and when the kids made “how a pumpkin grows” charts around Halloween. The goals for this semester relating to science according to my CT are to teach the subject in a manner that promotes quality understanding of the material presented with strong participation and enthusiasm from the students, with the intentions of keeping the kids interested and excited about science as a school subject. My CT likes to do a lot of presentations, hands-on work, and diagrams in teaching this subject, as well as using books and readings to cover subject matter. Each student is assigned a “science buddy”, and pairs work together on experiments and projects in order to promote interaction, team building skills, and group learning. In this classroom, the GLCE’s are not used; rather the “how-to science handbook” and district science curriculum implemented by Lansing is followed by all of the first grade teachers. The school that I volunteer at has a science supply closet with materials for each unit and grade level that teachers can take from to help teach different science lessons. Various things around the school, such as posters, fiction books, and the outdoor nature trail help reflect and promote science here. I am really excited to see how science is taught and how the students will respond to the subject matter over the course of the next semester!