Field Observation - 5 Journal Entries

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 1^st 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 1^st 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.