Elanna Worthy Dr.

Li EDUC 421 5 March 2014 Weekly Visit #4 On March 5th, after arriving to Mitchell Math & Science Elementary School and retrieving our name tags from the front office, I continued onto Mrs. Lackeys second grade classroom awaiting her joyful voice and multidimensional classroom. We usually arrive to the school around eight oclock on the dot, but this Wednesday, there was excessive traffic and a bad accident on the road; we did not arrive until almost nine oclock. When I walked in the classroom, Mrs. Lackey was already finishing her reading/writing lesson in the students workbooks. They were reviewing rhyming words, words that look alike but are spelled differently, and words with their many different endings. Sometimes students get off track, do not pay attention, or write the incorrect answers in the blank spaces, so I always walk around assisting students and make sure they are following along with Mrs. Lackey as she leads the activity. I tend to usually help the same students each week because the same students are not on reading level and not paying attention. Mrs. Lackey uses different incentives to keep the students paying attention and on task such as changing their clips, suspending their use of the computers, and dictating which center they attend. Most of the time her incentives and repercussions work on the students, but this day, the students were excited, rebellious, and off task. I had to repetitively ask one group of girls to stop talking amongst each other. It seemed as if they refused to stop talking, but they were really just excited and interested on their particular topic, which I think was Beyonce or music artists. As I asked the students to stop talking, I suggested talking about this topic at lunch time or recess, in order for them to get their focus back to ELA. Other students that were off task had attitude problems, and they needed them adjusted. Some students simply refused to do any work. They refused to open their booklet; they refused to comply with the teachers requests; they refused to attempt the assignment. While Mrs. Lackey dealt with those students in the hallway, she asked me to continue the lesson in the booklet with the rest of the class. I walked around the students tables instructing and guiding them through the next section. The students continued to work on this section as if I was Mrs. Lackey herself. This made me happy that they respected me enough to continue working hard and progressively through the section. After the students in the hallway were handled and finished with the ELA activity, Mrs. Lackey instructed the students to prepare for reading groups. Mrs. Lackey assigned me to three different groups today. Some of the students were the same, but the overall groups were different. The first group I worked with for the first thirty minutes read a book with different chapters. We discussed the definition of Nonfiction and some characteristics of Nonfiction books. The students read the book aloud to me. I stopped them intermediately to ask them questions making sure they were fully comprehending and paying attention to what they were reading. Some of the students got excited when I asked questions because they got to show me their knowledge and comprehension skills. One student was paying attention, fully comprehending, and focused, but he hated when I stopped and asked questions because his initial goal was simply to read the book. After this group finished reading the book, they read and answered the questions together. They had a few questions on pronouncing some words in the

questions, but for the most part, this group worked expeditiously and independently. They prided themselves on their hard work and ran over to Mrs. Lackey to show her their excellent work. Mrs. Lackey looked at me for assurance that they behaved in my group before she rewarded them. I assured her that they behaved well for the thirty minutes that I worked with them. For the next two groups I was supposed to work with, the majority of the students were not in the room; they were pulled out from a reading specialist teacher. Mrs. Lackey instructed me to work with different students remaining in the classroom on their African American Biography Projects. Some of her students had yet to gather the information on their person from the computer, so I worked with three students on-and-off on the three computers that Mrs. Lackey has in her classroom. Honestly, the students get a little rowdy when allowed to use the computers, so trying to get three excited seven and eight year old students to focus was a little struggle. All students act differently on the computers, but they are all happy, eager, and enthusiastic when on the computers that they sometimes do not have the ideal goal in mind of completing their work. It was a struggle keeping some of the students on task for the whole duration of time because some students were concerned with listening and watching the videos on their people over and over again. I had to really watch and guide the students as they completed the worksheet. I worked with those students until they finished their worksheets and began with some students on transforming the information they found on the web to formal sentences that will go in their Biography Summary. Only one of the students I worked with were able to get to that step. By the time they finished on the computers, it was time for their lunch and time for me to go, so I said my goodbyes and left quietly.