Observation day #2 September 12, 2014

I am continuing my observing in Ms. Sederholm's 4th grade class.

The prompt that I will address for this observation was the chance to work one on one. It was actually me with 2 students. The kids are working on getting prepared/trained to be "buddy readers". The 4th graders will be working one on one (or sometimes 2 depending on how the numbers work out), with first graders and tutoring them in reading. It's a great program and lots of fun to see how the 4th graders enjoy working with and teaching the 1st graders. We had Ms. Anderson come into the classroom, she is the Star Tutoring specialist. She talked to the kids about phonics, teaching them so they could teach the 1st graders the same lesson. Then she had them break into groups of 2 and re-enact, being the "tutor" and the "tutee". This was where I had the chance to walk around and help out some of the groups.

I helped them figure out the lesson, where to find it and read through some of the directions. I also helped them with some language use, scripting of how to talk to the 1st graders, and gentle reminders to be positive. One little guy was so funny, when I said ,"He did it right, now what do you tell him?" "That was amazing!" he said. It was cute.

In observing in my classroom, I did think a little bit about some of the segregation issues we have been learning about in our modules. I know Utah is different than the southern states and the impact of segregation wasn't as deep. But it was still nice to notice that in this classroom with the few children who come from different ethnicity's, they were easily and comfortably included in the class. There was no evidence of discrimination among the students or the administration/teacher. It wasn't even something anyone seemed to think about. It was refreshing after reading some the challenging things that took place after Brown vs. Board of Education. 

Ms. Sederholm likes to use her Smartboard.  That is something I hope to learn from her. One of the other prompts was some of the other duties of the teachers. Ms. Sederholm is the Smartboard specialist for the school. She had some classes and did some training at the end of last year and over the summer, so she could bring it back to the school and pass on the informatin to the rest of the teachers. It is an amazing tool. I hope to have her give me some start up training on using it. I like that it can save info you have put on it from day to day, so you can bring something up that you wrote yesterday and continue with a lesson. Nice!

Additional things I found interesting:

• Ms Sederholm has a class theme about pirates, which is a lot of fun. She has different attention signals, incentives and pictures that go with the pirate theme. There are some very effective ideas that she uses for classroom management. 
• I like how she will review the schedule for the day at the beginning of class, I think this helps those who need to know "what's next!?" 
• She addressed September 11th, really casually. Telling the kids it is a topic to ask their parents about, but they could get more info on Nick.com if they want to look at that (with permission from their parents). 
• At one point one of the kids said, "I hate Social Studies!" and Ms. Sederholm replied, "Ohhh, but Social Studies loves you!" I thought it was a fun and cute response.

My first observation day 9/8/2014

For my first observation I went to Snow Springs Elementary in Lehi. It is the school my kids go to and I had a great chance to sit in with Ms. Sederholm in the 4th grade. I was there for 3 hours of the morning schedule. Which included: Journals, Pledge, Schedule review and Math.

This is the journal prompt I want to address today:

How does knowledge of the way people learn relate to the experience of being a teacher?  

During the math activity, Ms. Sederholm interacted with the class in a couple of different ways. She had some cards taped around the room, with some math questions. The kids were asked to take their math notebooks and go find the questions and answer them in their notebooks. This activity was geared toward mostly your visual learners , but I do think a little towards kinesthetic learners as well. The visual learners could see the problems and then solve them. I think the opportunity to get up and move may have helped the kinesthetic learners. 

When Ms. Sederholm called the class back together they reviewed the answers together using the ELMO, which would bring in the auditory learners and more visual.  They continued to work on an additional math page together on the ELMO. She used a lot of "We Do" and then turned it over to "You Do", and then reviewed it together. I think this is good for the visual and auditory learners. 

I think finding ways for the kinesthetic learners will be the most challenging learning type to apply in the classroom.

Another additional thing I enjoyed seeing that relates to developmental differences of students in the class, was the following: 

One 5th grader is a wiggly thing, he sits on the back row and is up and down, up and down. For this little guy to sit still in his chair is too much, his behavior is not an intentional, attention getting activity. It is part of his learning abilities. I talked with the teacher a little about her approach and I appreciated her strategy. She sits him on the back row where he can have a little bit of extra room to move about, but without anyone around him he isn't disruptive to the other children in the classroom. She also placed him next to a very easy going, fun and responsible student - who could be a good example and friend to him. I thought this was well done.