Today was our 4th day in the classroom. It was overall a good day because Tia and I were able to interact with the kids and work with them, rathern than observe them. Every morning the students start off their day by taking out their agendas and writing down their homework for the night. They also write a journal everyday which consists of an open ended question given to them by the teacher. I honestly felt as if I took a lot away from this weeks observation because I was given the chance to ask myself what I would do in that situation and how I would run my own classroom as well as see the students connect with the teacher. It showed me what goals I have for my classroom and how I want to better myself as a future teacher.
I really enjoyed the beginning of the class because Ms. Swan had mentioned to the students that she had gone and seen a musical the night before. It was performed by a touring company in a big city about an hour away. She saw the musical Once and it is about a young man that wants to be a big singer but he lives in Ireland and the chances of him going to California, U.S.A were very slim. The teacher enjoyed the musical so much because there was a lot about going after your dreams and never giving up. It was also very cute because the students know how much Ms. Swan loves Ireland so the students were asking her a lot of questions and asking what she would do if she was ever able to travel to Ireland one day.
"You have one life - live it." Ms. Swan said this towards the end of her sharing about the musical and it really made me think twice about how true it is. It was a simple saying with a lot of meaning. Ms. Swan really enjoyed the message of how important it is to achieve your dreams and then played the music for the students.
After the class was finished listening to the music from the play, the students worked on Orton GIllingham and reviewed the letters by tracing them out on their desk with their fingers. The students also said each letter and the sound that they make. I've noticed that the class does this everytime we are obversing so it leads me to believe that they do this exercise everyday. I think this is very helpful for these students because they have problems with reading and writing and Ms. Swan has mentioned before that repition is one of the best things to help these students learn the difference between letters and their sounds. Some of the words also have pictures that coincide with the letters and the students use these to figure out the sound to the correct letter.
Ms. Swan plays music during her lessons and I've come to enjoy the background music. She plays many CD's by The Piano Guys and this group of piano players performs acoustic versions of popular songs. One song that I recognized during the lesson was My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion so I was enjoying the music.
The students started working on a-e words: a - consonant - e. The kids were learning that adding a vowel after a consonant makes the word go from a short vowel to a long vowel. ex: hat - hate, can - cane. The students also worked on VCE - vowel, closed syllable, silent e. The teacher taught the students a trick to remember the acronym for VCE and they wanted to make a song out of the saying which I thought was a very creative and useful idea for these students. Especially because they came up with the idea all on their own and a good portion of the class seemed excited about this possibility. Tia and I also read a book in 3 small groups with the class and we went over rabbit words. Ex: c v c c v c - r - a - b - b - i - t. The word can be split up inbetween two consonants.
The only thing that I've come across so far that I don't seem to like in Ms. Swan's classroom is her classroom managment when it comes to punishment. She continued to say to a student in front of the rest of the students how if they didn't start behaving that she would call home to mom and dad but the student continued to misbehave and get off task. I didn't like how she would stop teaching her lesson to turn around and call out this particular child. I feel that she should pull him aside when the class is preoccupied and tell them that she is being serious. She also continued to threaten the student but didn't keep on her word so I felt that the student didn't take her seriously.