On September 3rd, I walked to Mrs.Wells' (pseudonym) classroom at 7:30 in the morning to begin the first day of my internship; I was nervous. Not knowing what to expect from my collaborating teacher or the students even. I have been in the classroom before but simply as an observer for my prerequisite courses. I walked into an empty first grade classroom where I was greeted by a lovely smile from Mrs. Wells. She seemed to just as excited and nervous as I was. As I looked around the classroom I observed the daily calendar, reading rug surrounded by books in the library. As finished making my way around the classroom she told me that for just the first day I could just observe and get use to everything and all the students. She said I could walk around the class to watch the students work and to get a feel for the classroom. She then began to tell me about the students in her class, three of the students were retained last year and were repeating the first grade again and three of the students had a twin. Which I thought was really amazing. Also i was informed that one of the students has cerebral palsy her name is Abby (pseudonym) which impacts her movement around school and in the classroom. Which require her to have special accommodations and specialists coming into the classroom to work with her. As students began to arrive I sat at the table in the back of the room and watched as the children followed their morning routine. The students realized who I was and why I was there because Mrs. Wells told them I was coming earlier in the week. As the final morning bell rang the students sat at their seats silently reading. Mrs. Wells introduced me to the class and the class in unison said " Good Morning Ms. Minor!" My heart fluttered with joy. As the morning rolled on the class gathered on the rug as Mrs. Wells read a story to the class they had already read earlier in the week, But this time they had to compare and contrast 2 characters from the book. The class worked together for the first comparison and the first difference. Then the students on their own had to come up with two more examples for each column. When they were finished with this assignment Mrs. Wells administered reading level test to some of the students, as she did this the other students read silently around the classroom by themselves. The students participated in this activity for about 10 minutes before they became restless and bored with the activity. As I walked around to try to refocus some of the students I saw that many of the students were just most flipping through the pages of the book looking at pictures and then moving on to the next book and not actually reading. As I saw this it made me question if they could actually read the books they picked out or just like what the thought the book was about?! Maybe for this time to move smoother the time allotted for this activity should be shorter and the children should be give books that the can read the words, so they are just not moving from book to book, And not learning anything from the books they have "read." As it is still the being of the year and testing the students is important. As a teacher, I will try to have quiet and engaging activities prepared for the students during this time.
The next thing I noticed on this day was that Mrs. Wells had somewhat of a passive aggressive attitude toward the children that were misbehaving in minor ways or not doing what was expected of them. Such as, when the student was sitting on the carpet and were sitting inappropriately the teacher would compliment the students sitting around the one that was not sitting correctly to encourage them to do the right thing. I thought this was effective for some of the students but not all because some did not understand the concept of this method. But as the day went on she became more direct with the students and so there was no confusion for the student. Which I believe was best because there was not anymore confusion between what she wanted them to do you or what was expected of them.
The next thing I noticed on this day was that Mrs. Wells had somewhat of a passive aggressive attitude toward the children that were misbehaving in minor ways or not doing what was expected of them. Such as, when the student was sitting on the carpet and were sitting inappropriately the teacher would compliment the students sitting around the one that was not sitting correctly to encourage them to do the right thing. I thought this was effective for some of the students but not all because some did not understand the concept of this method. But as the day went on she became more direct with the students and so there was no confusion for the student. Which I believe was best because there was not anymore confusion between what she wanted them to do you or what was expected of them.