According to Erikson, the students in the class I have been observing are in stage 4: Industry versus Inferiority. I saw many examples of this while in the classroom. During math, while working in their journal, the teacher would choose one student and they would get to play “teacher”. They bring their journals up to the ELMO. Then they begin to show their classmates how they solved the problem. This helps build the student’s self–esteem because they are proud of their work and they get to share it with the rest of the class. One thing the teacher did that I think did not help the students in this stage is she had a competition on who could say their 3 multiplication answers the fastest. For students who could not do them all the first time, they had to say them again before going to play during recess. I feel this made to students feel that they were not as smart as the rest of the students in the classroom. This did not help build their self-worth. Another good example I saw while observing was when they were reading a passage about trees, the teacher asked them a question about the passage. One little boy, who is below level, raised his hand to answer. When the teacher called on him to answer, he got it correct. You could see the excitement for being able to answer the question with no help from the teacher or a peer. The teacher then gave the student praise for getting the answer right.
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