Reflection About Penguins

I was happy to have an assignment that works with children’s school since I am an education major. I have worked with the Common Core Standards in multiple education classes so I am starting to become familiar with them and how important it is for classroom teachers to implement them. The student who wrote the essay about penguins demonstrates certain aspects of the 4th grade State Standards, however, there are some components missing. The student writing the essay, Evan, provided a lot of information about penguins, however, he did not display these details in an organized way. Evan does provide an acceptable introduction. He informs us that he will be teaching us about penguins and includes a little background knowledge. These small

Evan struggled with organizing his facts. The essay was choppy and lacked flow. Standard 3 for 4th graders in the writing sections states that students should be able to produce clear writing in which the development and organization are appropriate. Evan has all the foundation he needs in his writing, but his structure needs some work. For example, in the paper, Evan says, “baby penguins can’t go and hunt for food until they are old enough. So like a mama bird parents pre-chew it for them.” This sentence is not grammatically correct for many reasons. One reason is the word choice. It is not appropriate to write “so like” in an educational paper. Overall, I think Evan’s paper was informational and pretty well written for a 4th

As a future teacher, these are the kinds of things I will be looking for when I grade future students’ work. As mentioned above, I have worked with the Common Core Standards before, which gave me an advantage in this assignment, but I still wonder how I should write them out in a way that makes sense to others. For instants, do I write “NYSCCS 4W2.b” to mean “NYS Common Core Standard 4th grade, writing standard 2b”? Comparing a sample of a child’s work with the Common Core standards made it easier for me to see the correlation between what should have been included in Evan’s paper and what was missing. Personally, I feel like the Common Core has good intentions for students and schools although it is being implemented in a bad way causing the Common Core to have a bad reputation. I do not think students should be tested to prove their knowledge or understanding of a topic. Yes, it is helpful to gauge where students are, but it should not the only thing used to assess students. The Standards give teachers a guideline to follow to make sure their students are on track. I enjoyed working with the Common Core Standards for this essay. It was nice to focus on one grade and one section (ELA) instead of a general overview of every standard K-5. Focusing on just the 4th grade standards made them seem less overwhelming and allowed me to comprehend the standards better. Again, as mentioned previously, I also liked comparing a real life example