Field Visit #2

My second field visit to my classroom was even better than the first one. I began this visit by just observing like last time. I watched as the teacher read aloud to the students from Bud, Not Buddy. It was interesting to see how the students responded differently to the book. Some sat intensely focused on the book while others sitting in the back seemed to get distracted by other thoughts once in awhile. They all seemed to enjoy the experience though and peels of laughter could be heard from the whole group in unison at certain points throughout the reading. I made me feel good to see that they were having such a good time and that read alouds can still be as entertaining to children as video games and television. I was also interested to see how the teacher interacted with the students during the read aloud. She stopped to ask them questions sometimes, but not so much that the reading was disfluent. The questions were of various natures including clarifying, summarizing, predicting, and reacting. She also stopped at one point because one student wanted to share a personal story that connected to the book. The teacher let the student tell his whole story, but was then quickly able to refocus the class on the book so that other students did not start wanting to share their own stories as well. I thought it was nice that she allowed this student to share and was not so overly concerned with time and getting a certain amount of reading finished that she had to ignore the student.

During this field visit, I also got to work on word study with two girls in the class. I really enjoyed this because it gave me a chance to interact with two students on a more personal level. They were working on making words plural with es, s, and ies endings. They cut out their list of words and made categories with them. Then I helped them to join some of their categories together and to understand why certain words were grouped together because of the way they are spelled when they are made plural. This helped them to understand the different plural endings. Then they practiced spelling some of the words before I gave them a "test" on all of their words. They used white boards and erasers to write their words. After they had spelled a word, I asked them why they spelled it the way they did. This allowed them to process the different rules in greater depth. I also gave them one word from each category to spell that was not on their word list to see if they could apply what they had learned to new words. They did very well with this task. I was impressed to see how engaged the two girls were with the words. They enjoyed cutting out their words and putting them into categories. They were also eager to spell all of their words for me to prove that they could do it. I was happy to see the amount of effort they put forth during this task. It seemed more like a fun activity and less like work to them.

Field Visit #1 Observing

I really enjoyed my first time back in our classroom since fall semester. It was interesting to see what was new and what had stayed the same regarding our classroom, the students, and even the teacher! The desks are in a new arrangement now as a sort of horseshoe and there are some new things on the bulletin boards. I especially noticed that the science board now has several vocabulary lists for different topics on it that are probably going to be very important for the SOLs. It's nice to see some changes like these that give the room a new and exciting atmosphere. However, I also noticed that one of the bigger bulletin boards has not changed at all since we first started our field placement in the fall. Some of the students looked a little older and taller and some looked the same. It is also possible that there may be a new student in the class because a staff member from the office came in looking for a boy whose name we did not recognize from the fall.

I felt like it was very easy to get back into the groove of our classroom. The kids remembered us and the teacher was very friendly and accommodating. We already knew the students' names and the daily schedule which helped as well. We observed the students during their language arts period in which they participated in reading groups. Many of the students left the room and of those that remained, three worked with the teacher at a kidney-shaped table while another three worked independently at their desks and then they switched places. The students working independently read to themselves, but were also free to move about the classroom and to use the computer. We also observed our teacher's block one science class. This was very helpful to see because we will probably be teaching our unit to this block one science class. They were working on habitats. The teacher split them up into groups of three and gave them a large piece of paper and a few books on a specific habitat. The students were asked to draw a picture of their habitat, using specific animals and plants that they found in the books that actually live in that habitat. It was interesting to observe the dynamics of different groups. In several cases, it appeared that two students were taking charge while another followed the directions of the other two. Some groups seemed to be lagging behind at the beginning. By the time we left though, they all seemed to be working hard on their projects.

I was impressed by how smoothly the day seemed to be running given that they were on a two-hour delay schedule. I think the daily schedule and routines of the classroom helped the students to settle into their work. The teacher seemed very flexible as well. This is important since there are so many interruptions that occur in a classroom throughout the school year. I had a good first experience in our classroom for this semester and I am glad I got to observe both our regular class and this science class on our first time back in the classroom.