Monday, September 17, 2012

Thick Description: First observation & Treatment Group Day 1



Location: Third Grade Class B.
Time of day12:50-1:30pm               Classroom Activity: Daily 5 reading block   

            This observation occurred during the second day of implementation of the treatment group.  I arrived early to allow time for observation before the thirty-minute small group.  As I entered the classroom, I noticed that this classroom was more active in moving around the class than Class A (the class from the first observation and treatment group).  This classroom was participating in the “Daily 5” literacy structure where students “work on writing,” “read to self,” “read to peers,” “listen to reading,” and “work on words.”  Students were placed throughout the classroom; some were on the floor reading with peers, some lying under tables reading alone, while others were working in their journal or completing independent centers for word work. Students in the classroom seemed to be less independent than the previous classroom often going to the teacher to ask questions.  While the students were working independently, the teacher worked with 5-6 students at the kidney-shaped table in the back left corner of the classroom (exactly the same as the previous classroom).  The teacher was working with small groups based on student needs concerning the use of reading strategies.  The majority of students were quietly working with peers or alone but a few students required instructions and redirections from the teacher to stay focused and complete their center. 
            This is the special education cluster classroom and the teacher has supported the independent work of students by creating posters to guide them through the steps of the “Daily 5” activities.  When the special education students returned to their classroom from the resource room, they required brief instructions from the teacher (stated from her seat at the table) to use the posters to find their station.  The students were able to select the activity they needed to complete and independently moved throughout the classroom to begin their activity.  The posters seem to be a strong visual support for all students in the classroom.  The rules and expectations of the classroom were clearly posted where all students could view them. 
            The classroom was clean and brightly colored with teacher made posters and decorations.  The class library was categorized by interest or topic, which increases ease of finding interesting texts for students.  Talk in the classroom consisted primarily of students interacting with each other during their centers and was focused on their activity.  In this classroom, students were more energetic but they were able to stay on topic within their collaborative pairs. 
            Following observations in the classroom, I asked five students to move to a table to the right of the classroom, where the fewest students were working, to begin the first meeting.  This group required additional time to introduce the concepts and strategies, as well as, to stay focused and wait their turn to talk. This was the initial meeting of the group and instructional interaction with the researcher seemed to excite the students, which increased engagement but made it difficult to focus them on the tasks while they were asking me questions and telling me about their new toys or summer vacations.  I assumed that my background with these students, as a collaborating teacher in their early primary classrooms, would be a strength but it seemed to be more of a distraction during this sessions.  The students in this classroom had more difficulty with the motor aspects of the multisensory cues than the verbal prompting.  Students required physical assistance to isolate their pinky finger in order to begin finger tapping decodable words; by the end of the session all students made progress with this skill.  The students were able to tap out the sight words on their arms with little difficulty and were able to pound out sentences for segmentation.  The sentence editing strategy was novel to the students are required prompting, modeling, and support through all three dictated sentences. Students with limited language, one special education student and one ELL student, were able to successfully participate in the group and complete the tasks with assistance. Following the completion of the writing sample where students were asked to write three CVC words and three sentences as they were dictated, I praised the students, discussed the next session, and supported their transition back to the classroom literacy structure. 

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