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Elizabeth Lerch Classroom Observations Upon entering my practicum classroom for the first time, I immediately noticed the impressive organization of the room. Everything had its place and the students had learned throughout the year to put items back in their respective locations after being used. When entering the room, directly to the right is a large colorful carpet for Group Time. At this area the classroom is equipped with a Smart Board, calendar, charts to track students birthdays an d who lost a tooth, and the alphabet above the Smart Board. My cooperating teacher uses the Smart Board for interactive literacy lessons, such as displaying pictures of every-day items beside two columns, both with a different letter, and the children drag the pictures to the appropriate column of the letter with which the word begins. Since the carpet is also where read-alouds happen, there is a rocking chair for the teacher and an easel where she displays big books. During center time, students are allowed to take books off the easel and read to themselves or each other. The teachers desk is adjacent to the read-aloud carpet. She is always available when students need help with reading and writing. Behind the carpet are three large tables around which all the students sit. Each table has a bin of books that children grab from during transitions. They know to take a book and read while other students are completing a task. On my first day, when the students were told to put their books away there was a collective groan because they wanted to keep reading. On the side of the classroom opposite from the entrance is the reading center. There are bean bag chairs, small carpet squares, and other seats students can choose from to be comfortable while they read. One thing I noticed though is that the shelves enclosing the reading center dont have a who le lot of books to choose from. Upon asking the teacher, I learned that she changes the books on the shelves periodically to reflect the themes the class is learning. The majority of the books are in shelved bins behind a round table in the back corner of the room. This table comfortably seats eight children and the teacher. Sometimes more than eight students have to sit around it but that gets cramped. This table is often used for small group work with the teacher and for remediation during Power-Up sessions, which I will explain later. Around the classroom there are a lot of posters and samples of students writing , but not so much that it is overwhelming. Different sections of the classroom have posters relating to bits of knowledge kindergarteners should know. For example, over the sink there are shapes with the name of the shape written below, above their cubbies are individual posters of colored crayons with the name of the color written beside them, and in the front of the classroom in the alphabet and some sight words. My teacher also does something that I find interesting she acknowledges students achievements by having a part of the wall secti oned off labeled with the task students are gradually learning and the names of the students who have mastered the task. Two achievements currently being displayed are I can count to 100! and I can tie my shoes! On the wall to the right of the door inside the classroom is a bulletin board that displays samples of students writing. Right now the board is winter themed and is titled Winter is Below the title are paper

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penguins in which each student wrote what winter is to them. The penguins contain a range of literary abilities, from Winter is fun to Winter is time to build a snowman. I did not see any labels in my classroom. I am not sure if there were labels at the beginning of the year and the teacher gradually removed them, or if there were never any to start with. The students in my practicum class vary greatly in their level of literacy, so labels might have helped some students more than others. There are a few students who are still struggling to match letter names to letter sounds, while on the other end of the spectrum one student can read aloud and comprehend more complex books with one paragraph per page. For group reading time, students are divided into three groups based on ability. The groups are named after animals sharks, giraffes, and lions. These literacy groupings do not translate to the seating arrangement in the class. There are three large tables around which the students are seated, but the literacy groups are mixed up among tables. At one table the best reader in the class is seated next to one of the lower-level readers. This is beneficial because at one point I saw the more advanced reader helping the other read a book from the bins on tables during a transition period. Besides students being seated in such a way that they can help each other, there are many practices put in place, either by the teacher or the school, which aid students in further advancing their skills. The school district implemented a new program this year called Power Up, which gives additional help to students in areas they need the most work with during the school day. All kindergarten teachers work together in this initiative, so all the kindergarten students are pooled together and then split off by how much assistance they need and in what subject. My cooperating teacher is in charge of helping the students who need the absolute most help in literacy. During my first day she was assessing the 5 students in her group one at a time to see where they currently stand. This allows her to see how far they have advanced since the year began, and also helps her to see whether students are able to jump ahead in the program. Power Up is a scripted program which progresses through many, many levels as students learn. Level 1 is used if students know absolutely nothing in the subject. Most Power Up teachers have not had to start at Level 1 because students had at least some background knowledge. My cooperating teacher has complained about the dryness of the program. It comes with a book that tells teachers exactly what to say and what to do, and leaves no room for personalization. From what I have noticed it does help but the students get bored. Another strategy my teacher uses to meet the needs of individual students is word rings , which are circular clips that start off by carrying approximately five words on separate index cards from the Fry literacy list. Students take these rings home and parents are supposed to help them learn their words (i.e. how to spell them, recognize them by sight, and pronounce them). On Fridays, students are quizzed one-on-one to see if they learned their words. If they learned their words then on Monday they get five new words. Students literacy needs are met by my cooperating teacher and me when we walk around during journal time and help students with their writing. Every journal entry involves drawing a picture about a prompt given by the teacher, and then writing a sentence about their picture. As with every other task,

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students abilities span a wide range. I have notice though that some students just need encouragement. They say that they do not know a word or letter but I nudge them along and they learn to do it on their own. When I asked my cooperating teacher what the literacy objectives were for the year I was initially surprised by how many there were. I did not expect there to be a lot for kindergarten, but thinking about it now I realize that the early childhood education years probably have the most literacy lessons to cover since early childhood is a critical time for children to learn concepts that will stay with them for life. One objective that I started to describe earlier is the word ring. All the words on students rings are from the first 100 set of the Fry Word List. Some words they are expected to know are: was, for, are, and in. From my observations so far, all the students are able to use these words in a sentence and they can usually recognize it when seeing it written, but a lot of them struggle with spelling these sight words. Another objective is to identify the sounds at the beginning and ending of simple words. They practice this skill in small groups with the teacher by using Sound Boxes, which I just learned about in an article we read by Patricia McCarthy. All the words the students are currently sounding out are three letter words like mat, cop, and bit. As they sound out a word they move the correct letter into the corresponding box on a sheet of paper with three empty boxes. Most students are capable of identifying the sounds of the wor d but when its time to move the letter into the appropriate box Ive noticed that a few children get d, b, and p mixed up. This is probably because they look so similar. After sounding out the three-letter words, students must be able to use the new words correctly in the context of a sentence. Currently their sentences are not very creative. Most sentences they create are, I saw a dog, or The mat is red. The most creative one I have heard thus far was hysterical. Their word was cop and one girl said, A cop likes donuts. That proves that kindergarteners are capable of making connections between these new words and previous knowledge, so it makes me wonder why they dont try to create more inventive sentences the rest of the time. A final literacy objective for kindergarteners is to be able to rhyme. The teacher improves their skill by reading books with a rhyming theme and having students put their finger on their nose if they can think of a word that rhymes with the main word on the page. After reading the story she does activities that involve more rhyming, like saying a random word and asking students to come up with rhyming words. Students often create make-believe words, but as long as it rhymes with the original word my teacher encourages them to keep going. I help them recognize rhymes by pointing out throughout the day, like during centers, when students rhyme within conversation and may not have realized they were doing it. In addition to one-on-one attention, the most enjoyable and effective instructional technique I have observed was when there was a group of pictures and the students worked together in small groups to sort the pictures into columns based off the sound it starts with. Another instructional technique, which my cooperating teacher uses multiple times a day, is readalouds. The book always relates back to something the children are learning in the classroom or experiencing outside of school. For example right now all the books shes reading are about winter, Presidents Day,

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selected presidents, and Valentines Day. The students are great at making connections, and my teacher encourages them to share their thoughts when she reaches good stopping points in the book. I have helped with a literacy game that the children seem to like called the Cookie Game. They have a bag full of small circular cardboard discs with a picture of a cookie on one side and a letter on the other side. Taking turns, the students draw one cookie out of the bag at random, say the letter on the disc, the sound it makes, and then for an added level of difficulty I asked them to come up with a word that starts with that letter. If theyre able to do all these tasks they are allowed to hold on to the cookie, but if they cannot then it has to go back in the bag. The object of the game is to collect as many cookies as they can. There is a variation of this game in which the letters are textured and the students practice tracing the letter as an added step. The school day for my kindergarten class is spent evenly divided between them doing activities at their desk and activities that allow them to get up and move around. When students are at their desks they know to choose a book from the bin on the table and read until their peers are done with the assignment. Having this transition strategy greatly improves the time on task for every student. There is very little noise to distract students who are trying to complete desk work. Students level of engagement and attention spans are greater than I had e xpected. During my second day in practicum I did an informal read-aloud with half the class using a book titled A Snowy Surprise. I thought they would be rowdy and inattentive since I was new to their classroom and they might not have perceived me as an authority figure yet. To my surprise they were engaged for the whole story and cooperated whenever I asked them to do something with me, like count the number of cakes or say aloud repeating phrases. When it came time to do the comprehension activity after I read, many students were able to complete the activity either by themselves or with minimal help from me. My practicum classroom provides an ideal environment for literacy education. There are many opportunities for children to explore on their own through games, books, toys, and much more. Students also have activities throughout the day in which they work primarily in small groups with the teacher. Unfortunately there are not many chances for one-on-one work with the teacher since the day is so full, but during journal time in the morning or during centers the teacher and I walk around to give personalized assistance and attention. If given the chance, however, there are a few things I would change about this classroom to promote literacy even more. In the picture on page three you can see that there are many important posters that students should be able to refer to which are not at eye-level for easy viewing. From the carpet or even from their tables, students have to crane their necks to see the alphabet above the Smart Board. Seeing how important it is for students to know their alphabet before leaving kindergarten I believe the alphabet poster should be lower to the ground so it is at eye-level for the students. By doing this, even if students are not making a conscious effort to look at the alphabet, when they look around the classroom it will be in their line of sight. That will allow them to subconsciously make literacy connections.

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One thing that I have surprisingly not observed is a block of time reserved during the day for students to read to themselves and to each other. Read-alouds are the only time students are scheduled to have experiences with books. True, they read during transitions but that is only for maybe a minute or two at a time certainly not long enough to finish a book. During centers I have only seen two students voluntarily go to the reading center. One of those two is the top reader in the class who honestly does not need more practice to reach the kindergarten learning objectives; she has already reached them. In my own classroom someday I will set aside a chunk of the day for students to explore a book of their choosing, and I will rotate from among students to provide assistance as needed. Besides these changes that I would make, my practicum classroom overall is a wonderful room that promotes literacy. The teacher makes many conscious decisions which greatly benefit students literacy abilities. It is unfortunate that there is so much stress for students to reach specific goals by designated points in the year. I believe that if teachers were able to take a more leisurely pace and review concepts multiple times to guarantee understanding students would actively seek out books and other literacy-based activities in their free time. This is the ultimate goal we as teachers should aspire to for our students.