Student Observations Day 2

Today we spent our second day in The Learning Academy observing our student and how the teacher runs the classroom, teaches the class as a whole and individually. I am observing Jackson in Ms. Swan's class.

Unfortunately, Ms. Swan had to proctor testing with students throughout the day so we had a substitute teacher, Mrs. Turner. Mrs. Turner said that she has been teaching for almost 25 years in the public school system and then occasionally would substitute in private schools. In The Learning Academy, the teachers use the Orton Gillingham method and Mrs. Turner was not familiar with that method so instead Tia (the other student teacher in the classroom with me), Mrs. Turner and I took turns listening to each student read a short story to us while the other students worked on a packet that specialized with -ck words.

The book that each of the students read to us was called The Gas Hog by Matt Sims. It was about a teenage boy who just bought a big truck that used an excessive amount of gas. The book had 6 short chapters and I listened to 4 students read the first 3 chapters. The first student that read was a young girl and she took about 15 minutes to read. Afterwards, the next 3 students (boy, boy, girl) took about 7 minutes to read the 3 chapters. At the end of a page or two, I would ask the students what happened or what the main character did and they answered the question correctly which showed that they were comprehending what they were reading. Each student had trouble with the word tires and had to sound the word out numerous times. I noticed that anytime any of the students had trouble with a sentence or word, they would reread the word and sentence until it made sense to them. Another thing that the students had trouble with was the main characters name was Luke. The students are working -ck words this week so when they first saw the word Luke they immediately changed it to luck.

Unfortunately, I was not able to work with Jackson for this activity because Mrs. Turner picked students for Tia and I at random to read with. It was a great experience and I was very excited afterwards that I was able to read with not just one, but four students during the time that I was there. Also, while I was walking around the classroom, I did notice that Jackson had the book Diary of a Whimpy Kid on his desk during the day which I remembered that he said the week before that was his favorite book series.

#Observations #Day2 #TheGasHog