Flying Solo

My mom, who is the Early Childhood Coordinator at Charleston Development Academy also teaches at an after school tutoring program at the school I am currently interning at, Chicora Elementary every Tuesday and Thursday from 2:45pm to 4:45pm with a partner teacher from Charleston Development Academy. Charleston Development Academy does not dismiss until 3:00pm so my mom has asked if I would watch her tutoring class from 2:45pm to roughly 3:15 – 3:30 pm until she can arrive. This past Thursday however 3:30pm came and went and she had not arrived yet, and on this particular day, I did not have my cell phone with me so I was unable to contact her about her whereabouts or any instructions I was to have with her class. The after school class works from assignment books that my mother keeps with her, and usually when I watch her students I will let them read books or give them simple math problems to solve. However by 3:30pm came and went, and the students were getting restless and unruly, and I had find something to do to keep the students from getting, well, out of control. There were a few games and activities I had remembered learning about at different staff professional development sessions that I could try and get the students to participate in (and it didn’t make my situation any simplier that I had to come up with on the spot an activity that a first grader, two second graders, two third graders, and two fifth graders could all find equally engaging). My first idea was “my name is (alphabet letter) and I like (same alphabet letter)” which involved having a group seated in a circle and passing around a ball like a “hot-potato” and each member in the group and beginning with the letter “A” (and continuing though the alphabet) have each student give themselves a name and a “thing that they like” both starting with the same letter. The idea of handling a beach ball while learning got the student genuinely excited and at least cooperative to play, and it worked... for about 10 minutes. By the time we had reached "P" the students were getting

PASS Testing Week

I was able to observe the 3rd Graders at the school I am interning in, Chicora Elementary, during the school's PASS testing week (Palmetto Assessment for State Standards for writing). My first observation, although I was observing in a testing environment, was how quiet the classroom was compared to the 1st grade classroom I regularly intern in. Even before the testing began (the test was administered at 8:30am, I arrived in the room each morning at 8:15am) the class was quietly working at their desks on class work or reading. I quickly observed that older students had much more focus than the younger students! This was also observed during the test and after the test. During the test the students would be predominately focused on their test. There was no shuffling at desks, staring about the room, asking to use the bathroom (!!) or general, well, whining about the test (all of which is quite common during first grade testing). It is also to be noted that many of the students were testing for upwards of 2 hours (there was not time limit to the test, many finished within 2 hours, 10:30am, all completed by 11:ooam, and some of the quicker ones were finished before 10:00am). When a student completed their test, they would read quietly on their own (while the 1st graders I am familiar with do enjoy reading, they love to share/buddy read and read aloud to hear the words, our 1st grade DEAR time - Drop Everything And Read - is no more quiet than our morning meeting/sharing time)! I would love to one day see if I can schedule time and observe the older grades on my own, I would like to see how their everyday instruction compares and contrasts with teaching the younger students. It has occurred to me though that perhaps many of our problems we encounter in the 1st grade classroom is insufficient test modeling and instruction (showing and explaining to the students how a test should be taken quietly so as not to disturb fellow students). Another important aspect of test etiquette is controlling cheating. We stress in the classroom repeatedly that cheating harms the cheater than the one being cheated off of, mainly because the student “supplying the answers” may have gotten the question wrong, so cheating off of them only harms the cheater. Still our students see “an answer is an answer” without thinking for themselves. Our classroom has its share of “Susie Bright-Eyes” types of students however (students who gain attention my sharing/showing off answers) and while these students do tend to get the answers correct more often than naught, we have to teach them to learn to keep their answers to themselves and let the other students learn to think on their own without providing them shortcuts to the answers. There is so much for our students to learn outside of the realm of traditional reading, writing, and arithmetic, such as classroom behavior and self management skills, things one does not think that a student is taught in a classroom, however social skills and interactions would appear to be what children gain the most of about the world around them in a classroom setting.