Observation post, obs #2

My second observation in our 488 classroom took place Feb 22 from 9:15am to 11:15am. When I arrived, students were in their seats looking for vocabulary words (beside which they had already written down the definitions) in the text they were currently working on (an excerpt from Island of the Blue Dolphins, published in their basal readers). After students were finished, they were able to retrieve the "perfect paragraphs" they had been working on from the teacher and continue to work with them. The teacher asked me to circulate the room and help students with their paragraphs. According to the assignment, their paragraphs would be perfect when they were both interesting and grammatically correct. The paragraphs I read were very diverse, but also extremely interesting from an assessment point of view in that each paragraph aptly reflected the personality and interests of the student (especially since the subjects were chosen by the student). For example, one of the students, Adam, wrote his paragraph on Dwayne Wade, an NBA star, and I know that Adam loves basketball (it's most of what he writes about). On the other hand, Ina, who I know to be a high-achieving student and something of a teacher's pet, wrote her paragraph on adverbs (which happened to also be the grammar study for the day). The paragraphs, as whole, were very good. I had to note a few spelling problems and some problems with grammar (which students generally recognized and fixed when I asked them to read over the sentence for me), but I would say that the largest problem I found was punctuation, specifically commas after dependent clauses. I thought this was an interesting point, and as a teacher, I might use this information to inform future grammar/writing lessons.
As a side note--or perhaps simply a bit of a tangent--this exercise reminds me of something that the teacher had told us about her approach to writing in the fall. She told us that for the first quarter, she allowed her students to write as they knew how--encouraging and focusing more on the act of writing than on the grammar and spelling involved. Then, she said, in the second quarter, she began to put more emphasis on the construction of the writing: its grammar and spelling, for example. During language arts since second quarter, some of the period (at least once a week) is devoted to particular grammatical features. Last semester, I remember them working on subjects and predicates during one lesson. This semester, during this lesson (post-paragraph writing), they went over, filled out and reviewed an adjectives and adverbs handout. I really like this approach to writing because I think it encourages students to write and get comfortable with simply writing before requiring multiple things of them in terms of construction. I think that if the requirements for perfect grammar, etc. were there from the start, students might never get comfortable with writing because they're too overwhelmed. Writing is important, and I think this really shows that emphasis.
As noted in the above paragraph, the teacher shifted gears after the perfect paragraph-editing to a handout on adjectives and adverbs. I worked especially with Adam, who at first was completely confused and frustrated. After modeling one for him, we worked on some together and I tried to take away some of my support with each one so that by the end he could do them on his own. Sure enough, he was circling those adverbs and underlining the adjectives like nobody's business by the last item, and the smile on his face was huge. It's amazing how giving a little support in the beginning makes such a difference, especially for students who may have low confidence in their academic abilities (as Adam sometimes does).
At 10:30, two parents came in to talk about quilting (in the place of a regular science lesson) and then handed out materials so that students could create their own quilt-like patterns on paper squares. These paper squares were then handed to me, and I stapled them up on the bulletin board, creating a "paper quilt" on the wall. The students really got into the activity, though in some ways I'm still trying to understand how the activity relates to what they're doing in class. Maybe it doesn't...and maybe that's okay.
At 11:15, students stayed in the classroom for lunch because they were having a going away party for one student who was moving to another state that weekend.

Observation post, obs #1

Our first observation in the classroom (4th grade) took place February 2nd. During the time we were there (science class), the teacher lead a quick review of what needed to be learned for an upcoming assessment on weather and then had students split off into pairs or small groups to quiz each other on the material they had collected in their binders. I joined a group of two girls, Bethany and Teresa (these names have been changed), who insisted on me reading a description of, for example, a cumulo-nimbus cloud, leaving one word out which they had to guess. What I noticed most from this interaction was that both students were banking on success through recognition. The students in the group I was with resisted my suggestion, which was that I supply a concept/object (ex. cumulo-nimbus cloud) and they name some of the characteristics of that concept/object (ex. often involved in thunderstorms, may create flashflooding, large and low). This resistance reminded me of my resistance to the same type of learning--I would've much rather studied a little and been able to recognize a concept than to have to show my own understanding of the concept through writing/speaking/etc. Unfortunately for my past self and these two girls, I now realize that recognition does little for understanding. I might recognize that, in the cloze item "The two boys, who hadn't slept in days, were now ________ and ready for sleep. (excited, nervous, lethargic)," lethargic makes the most sense. But if you were to ask me to use lethargic in a sentence, I would have a much harder time with it (which is why the sentence above is possibly a terrible one). All this to say that I could see that some students, such as these, might need more of a push than others to go beyond recognition (and "getting by" for tests, then forgetting everything) and reach a greater level of understanding. It's more work, sure, but in the end, the students will benefit quite a bit.
After science class (and at some points during the class), my partner and I retrieved some of the materials we would need for our later lesson on the Western Region of the United States.