April 22, 2014

My Last Observations of Ms. Bryce

The week before I was able to stay in Ms. Bryce's classroom for almost four hours so I was able to see a little more than just reading block but actually a little bit behind the scenes of being a teacher. When I arrived that morning Ms. Bryce made everybody Buddy Read, back to back in silence for twenty minutes. They would then read ten with their buddies and twenty more in silence. As they were starting to read she would started crumpling up papers from this big binder and throwing them on the floor. I started seeing her subtle frustration in doing so, she explained that she kept great records of her kid but only a couple of papers will kept for their 2nd grade year. She didn't know this and even the words they needed to put on their word wall changed during the year. She was looking forward to next year because she will have adjusted to this school system and go all the way with Balanced Literacy. She showed me the running records (Marie Clay) that was kept on each child and what her goals were for the next month until school was out. There were quite a few students she was nervous about not making it to the second grade level. Seeing their progress made sense with what I have noticed about the student's in class. 

I came into a wonderful reading of E. B. White's Charlotte's Web. Ms. Bryce was walking around the classroom while her students were sitting at their tables with individual copies of the book. (By the way, there is a character named Avery who is a boy... I thought I would remember that detail about Charlotte's Web... I did not.) She would monitor for meaning by asking questions about the text to help students develop comprehension. Not only was comprehension achieved but also social studies with the observation of characters reactions and responses. I saw an active participation of a girl who I have seen goof off most of the time and a boy who would usually never voluntarily participate answer questions and make observations.