EDPC 610 Field
Observation - 5 Journal Entries
Dr. Hsu/Summer 2019
5/29/19
Location
/ Demographics / Observation Grade
I completed
my field observation in home school, Challenge Charter Preparatory School
located in Far Rockaway, New York. Challenge Charter Preparatory
teaches children K-5. CPCS is not a multiethnic school. Its student population
is 771 students of which 89% African American, 3% are ELL, and 16% are learning
disabilities students. CPCS does offer multicultural awareness activities that
teachers can incorporate to lessons, but are not mandated to do so. CPCS is in proficient- standing and received
its renewal charter for another five years to include a kindergarten
expansion. The school is located in the
heart of Far Rockaway, and provides an ELL program, Special Education Teacher,
(SETs) pull out and intervention support. CPCs also provides occupational
therapy for students with 504 plans and other special needs. In the area of sports and creativity, CPCS
has a girls & boys basketball team, cheerleaders, STEM, and dance. Students participate in these activities
after school. I visited Ms. B’s class for the first time. This 1st
grade class is comprised of twenty-five students, 1 lead teacher, and teacher assistant.
I saw ELL students being picked up to receive ESOL support by the ELL teacher.
5/30/19
Classroom Environment
Students are taught by lead teacher, Ms. B and
a teacher’s assistant Ms. P. The classroom environment was warm and inviting!
The room consisted of anchor charts, site words posted on one of the dry erase boards,
guided reading centers, students sat four or five to a table/ group. Learning tools such as a word wall, reading
center, math manipulatives, anchor charts, and behavior management chart. Ms. B
used the behavior chart a lot to model good behavior. In the reading area, I
saw the alphabet chart distinguishing each letter with a picture and a doughnut
table for small group lessons. I noticed how neatly the class look each day and
saw that the two educators never had to remind students to clear desk or to
pick up pencils off the floor. I didn’t expect a first-grade class to look so
neat and organized. The library was intact as well as the Reading area. Books
were in cataloged correctly. Each student
had access to a Chromebook laptop and work quietly on a program called i-ready.
Teachers upload work to individualized students according to their reading and
math levels. When students complete
their classwork, they can go to the reading rug or use their Chromebooks play interactive
games.
6/4/19
Classroom Instruction / Small
Group / Guided Reading
Before I got to the classroom, I asked the lead
teacher to send by email, her lesson plan. I wanted to have it while she delivered
the lesson. Before the lead teacher opened the lesson, the TA Ms. P walked over
to vocabulary words and said to students, “I want you to think of words that
end with “ee.” On the word wall, was the word “tree” students began raising
their hands and responses included the words: bee/see/three. The TA
then told students to get ready to read.
Afterward, Ms. B says, “Please take out your reading books and told
students what page to turn to and typed the page number on the smartboard. Next, “Who can tell me what a theme is?” A number
of students raised their hands. One student replied, “A theme teaches you a
lesson.” The TA praised the student and moved his clip up. Then the teacher
reminds the class that in the previous lesson, they had read about themes. The
TA then tells the class they will be reading another story in the text on
themes and uses the “Pick a Friend” to begin reading the text. I noticed that
both teachers taught the whole lesson, and I had never seen that before. The story about a girl who got a computer and
did not think she needed her drawing pad or markers anymore. Seeing this, the
art supply characters worked as a team to draw a beautiful picture to convince
the little girl she could still draw pictures to add to her final work. The
girl did this and realized that she could use a new computer and still have fun
drawing pictures. At the end of the
story were 4 questions to be answered. The TA had students to use both textbook
and workbook. The workbook had a graphic
organizer for the children to jot down their ideas before they answered the
questions. Some of the students filled
out the graphic organizer quickly while a handful didn’t. At the close of the lesson, few students did
not complete. I signaled to the
teachers and pulled a small work. I used
scaffolding methods to help students complete the work. I had students to look
back into the story and told them to pay attention to the facial expressions of
the characters in the book in the beginning and at the end of the book. Then I
asked them to quietly share with each other what they noticed. The next lesson
would be Guided Reading. The lead teacher told the students, “We are now moving
to our GR groups. I was amazed at how quietly these 1st graders moved
to their perspective groups. Ms. B had different reading activities on the
table for each group according to students’ reading levels. Ms. B had the
lowest groups. Students had to rotate every 20 minutes to another workstation. The teachers used an online timer by way of
the smartboard. Each time the timer went off, the students would rotate. This
included Ms. B’s group as well. When GR ended, students had to return to their original
seating and get ready to go to physical education class. I reflected on how important it is when the
two teachers or teacher and TA work harmoniously together, it can make a
difference in how the lesson is carried out. When teachers are motivated and
organized it reflects on their students especially a 1st-grade class
where the structure has to be ongoing. The lesson plan did not say which teacher
would be teaching what part of the lesson, so I could see how this type of flexible
teaching is possible. The classroom management
was on point as well. I noticed a behavior chart with clothing - pins to move
colors up or down. During the lessons, student’s names moved up. I didn’t see
any students clip move down on this day. I did, however, hear Ms. B remind one or
two students that their clips would move down if they continued to talk when it
was time to transition outside of the class for PE. Students paid attention to the teacher and
well behaved.
6/6/19
Learning Centers/
Differentiated /Assessment
On this day, students worked in
multiple centers. Ms. B had previously given a spelling test but two of her
students were absent, so they had to take their test in the Library Center of
the room. Ms. B brought a bucket with rocks and placed it on the table, it was
time for a science activity. Students
had to examine the rocks and talk about how they were different and how they
were they were the same. There was a stack of Venn diagram that students had to
use, but they only had to focus on the differences of the rocks. I watched how
well the scholars worked together. Some students had to draw and color the
pictures of the rocks. Other students
wrote down words to describe rocks. Students
who were finished taking their spelling test joined a group. Ms. P worked with
a small group of students who had another bucket of rocks and she asks questions
like, what does this rock feel like? How can you tell? I was asked to work with
Tier 4 students. My group was able to distinguish smooth rocks from the rough
ones and they placed them in a group. These students were done with the assignment
quickly. I asked the teacher if I could invite one of her Tier 2 students to
join the group and she asked if I could take two students. When both of the students came to the group,
I asked someone to please tell the two friends how they got to categorize the
rocks. The students explained it. I believed the guest was acting shy, so got
up, and I walked around the room to see what the other groups were doing. I
could see that the higher group was explaining the activity and that the more
one person explained another friend added on to the task.
During the activities, Ms. B asked if I would
do an informal/formal assessment of my group. I assessed the student as a
cooperative group based on how they separated the rocks, wrote, and oral
explanation. I gave the assessment to Ms. B, I also assessed the quality discussions
the group had. I noted how three of the group member’s shared, they had seen
one of the rocks in the street before. This discussion allowed others to
recall where they too had seen similar looking rocks. All students’ clips were moved up for working
together for following group norms. Ms. B and Ms. P incorporates B.F. Skinner’s
theory of operant
conditioning -- the idea that behavior is determined by its consequences, be
they reinforcements or punishments, which make it more or less likely that the
behavior will occur again. Also, Les Vygotsky’s social cooperative
learning, so that children can reach their Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
when a child learns from each other. Also, the way she used scaffolding for the
science lesson.
6/10/19
Technology
My focus on this day was how
teachers use technology in the classroom. During each lesson, Ms. B uses the
smartboard to type the name of the story to be read, page numbers and she sometimes
uses audiobooks with the smartboard. Students also use their Chromebooks as
CPCS is a Google certified school. All students have email addresses and can access
information from the teacher at home as well as completing i-ready. Each child
is expected to complete 30 minutes of I-ready lessons each day of the week. For
example, a student could be struggling with reading fluency or sounding outs
two syllable words. The teacher uploads the work, which is already identified
in i-ready, so the student practices until he or she masters the topic or
content. I-ready is data-driven. CPCS requires teachers to pay close attention
to i-ready growth. While students are on
their laptops, they can visit websites such as Google classroom. Today, students are completing i-ready
assignments that the teachers can track and give the student feedback on their progress
or area of deficiencies.
