Isabelle Tearse

March 6, 2018

8:30 -10:30 am

Literacy Centers

Observation & Participation

I observed literacy centers in a Kindergarten classroom at Venetia Valley.

There were many learning objective however the one for the table I was stationed at

was identifying the short vowel sound of the letter “i”. With the group of children I

was with we were completing worksheet that required us to read various words and

identify they contained the short vowel sound of i or if they did not. Additionally

another worksheet had the children looking at a picture and picking between two

words that identified the picture correctly. All the pictures contained a short vowel

and were very simply such as deciding between pin and pen. Or between the words

sit and set. When working in these groups I started to adopt a classroom

management strategy that I noticed the primary teacher using. When she wanted to

work with the children as a group she would as them all to raise their pencils in the

air when they were finished with the one question they were working on therefore

she could correctly see when it was time to move on to the next question. She would

also have them raise their pencils when first given the worksheet so that they could

be prepared to write their name on their paper as their first task. I noticed that the

teacher would only really use this strategy when she wanted the children in her

center group to work along with her specifically guided instruction such as for the
lower level in English language learners. I also noticed she did not use this with her

higher English proficient students since they could work through the activities

independently and could read all the words by themselves as well. I adopted this

because I saw how well it worked to get the children’s attention and to allow them

to self monitor so they knew when it was time to move on rather than constantly

asking the teacher can we go on. It was clear that the students were learning about

the short vowel sound of i because when we reached the worksheet that involved

them picking between two letters to correctly identify a picture they breezed

through it. With two of the groups, I worked through the worksheets as a group

however, with the other two groups I was able to sit back, observe, and only ask

students to correct incorrect answers since they were at a higher English reading

level.

Reflection

From this lesson, I learned how important classroom management really is and

how important it is to set these systems up at the beginning of the year. I learned that it is

most effective when the same classroom management strategies are used no matter what

teacher, staff member, or volunteer is in the classroom. By using the same strategies, the

students already know that procedure and are not having to constantly remember what

instructor or staff member prefers what kind of responses. Additionally, it makes life

easier on whoever is coming into the classroom as they can easily have control over the

classroom without having the set up a new foundation since once was already created by

the primary teacher.

 This observation significantly helped me with my understanding of my capstone

topic of classroom management. I had seen many different forms of trying to gather

everyone’s attention and keep children on task, but never this strategy. Through

observing this strategy, I learned how imperative it is to use the same classroom

management strategies repeatedly so that it does not confuse the students. This

observation will affect me as a future teacher because it showed me how successful a

classroom can be when the expectations are set up from the beginning off the year the

students know what to so when they have completed a task. Additionally it will influence

me because it showed me how it is possible to keep the attention of an entire group

silently and without having to call the children to attention. I hope as a teacher I will be

able to implement these teaching strategies in my future classroom. While I am aspiring

to be a special education, I think that both of these strategies would be beneficial to use in

a special Ed classroom.