Tessa Swiger

Practicum PreK-4

Mrs. Spudys LS Classroom

Monday October 2, 2017

1:30-3:30 PM

Next week I will be facilitating the English Language Arts lesson to Mrs.

Spudys third grade students. Today, I just observed the lesson. The same three students

were present (with the one who is typically absent was still absent). However, there were

three new aspects of this week I would like to touch upon. Those are behavior

management, grammar, and school wide safety.

The lesson was set up the same as the previous weeks. Students come in, show

Mrs. Newingham their assignment books, return to seat, then begin their ELA lesson.

What I noticed this week in Mrs. Spudys teaching, was that she was incorporating more

conversation with each student. She started off by asking students what they did this past

weekend. While listening, she would help students better their responses (using full

sentences, descriptive words, details), which I thought was good and authentic practice of

using these skills. Students read over words on their work sheets and used highlighters to

highlight any terms they did not understand or know how to say. Mrs. Spudy went

through any words that the students highlighted individually with them, either helping to

blend words or to define them. After, students moved on to saying these letter sounds and

words out loud. They were to first say the underlined letter sound, then the whole word.

Next, the words shifted out certain letters and replaced it with new ones, creating new

words. The students then took turns orally reviewing the mixed practice. Some of these
words focused on the er sound (which one student said it was the r sound). The words

that the worksheet listed for this activity were her, afer, under, mister, better, farther,

darker, leader, sister (student D kept saying sitter), and number. The exercises then

shifted to ar sounds, then to words with un. After, students worked on rhyming words,

word endings, more shifty words, more rhyming words, and finally multisyllabic words.

The multisyllabic words coincided with the story they were to read for the day, which

was about Harriet Tubman. It seemed that the last story they did was about Harriet

Tubman, so students were somewhat familiar.

The students got out their story books. Mrs. Spudy asked the students

questions such as who is the story about, what did she want, and what did she need to do

to achieve that. Each student answered their own question. Teacher read the first

paragraph, and students took turns reading their sentences. Mrs. Spudy emphasized the

importance of phrasing while they were reading, and had two of the students reread their

lines to further practice. She asked students if they knew what moss was, and student D

was able to answer. Student S read first without any phrasing errors, but did have trouble

on two words blending and sounding out. Student D read through his section once, fixed

his mistakes and reread with phrasing. Student B struggled a bit, which I was surprised

considering his fluency was perfect last week. His sentences were very choppy and he

would consistently pause. He then reread his section and the second time was much

smoother and more fluent. Students then answered review questions, discussed Harriet

Tubmans importance in history, and why slavery is wrong. To wrap up comprehension,

students went back to their activity book to complete the sentences, add periods if

necessary, and illustrate the sentences.

 While the entirety of this lesson is going on, the other side of the room

was having some issues. There were only three students on the other side as well, with

one girl absent. Student J, since he walked in, was having some sort of attitude and

attention issue the entire class period. He kept sighing loudly, was sitting sideways in his

seat (not facing his classmates/teacher), rolling his eyes, having dramatic movements

with his pencils and papers, and was sassy in his tone of voice with the teacher. Mrs.

Newingham kept prompting him to turn around and to stop it. This went on a while

longer, and eventually Mrs. Spudy asked if she needed to get some sort of paper work

from Student Js home room teacher, and he said no. However, the behavior still

continued. Eventually, Mrs. Newingham had him come sit on the other side of the table

(the tables are the semi circle shaped. He sat on one end and he was now sitting on the

opposite side). With this new move, he was still standing next to his chair, get up,

moving around, sitting on his knees, making noises with his mouth (buzzing his lips),

didnt seem to care at all about the task at hand. While the two other students were

reading aloud, Mrs. Newingham was continually telling Student J to stop it, thats

enough, stop it intermittently. I am unsure as to if there was already a prior issue, what

their behavior plan for him is, if it was solely for attention, if this has happened before,

but it was not only distracting to the students to the students that were participating, but

also to our side of the room. Typically, when I have seen an adult tell a child to stop it, it

rarely ends that behavior. In saying stop it, it could work if those words are spoken

infrequently and other interventions are used prior to that. If that were a student I had, I

would first try using positive interventions, giving him an opportunity to participate, and

praise good behavior. Not only to him, but all of the students. If that did not work, I
would then reward the two students who were paying attention and doing their work with

the play dollar bills the students earn (or some sort of motivating stimulus). I would

accompany that with I love how the two of you are paying such close attention/doing

good work/not disrupting the class, or whatever phrase or action is applicable. I am

curious as to what the behavior plan, if any, is used in the classroom or with individual

students.

As Mrs. Spudys side continues on with fluency, students read words

going down a column to themselves. The students were to check the boxes at the end of

each column when they were finished reading. They did not read the words aloud as a

group, instead they moved onto a quick spelling and grammar lesson (I think this was due

to time). They read a short poem that focused on the -oo sound. After reading through,

she had the students identify both some nouns and verbs that were in the passage. She

also reviewed what its was (a contraction). This took the students up to the end of

class. Each student earned one of the reward dollars if they could name a noun/verb that

wasnt in the story. After the students left, Mrs. Spudy and I sat down and talked and then

I helped Mrs. Newingham make some copies and packets for different assessments.

During our discussion, she explained how she tries to incorporate more

conversations in her teachings to help create meaningful connections, and to also practice

speaking skills. She tries to also review (outside of the curriculum) definitions of words,

any double meanings, and encourages students to answer questions in a complete

sentence (and restate the question in the answer). She also tries to incorporate some sort

of grammar practice into the curriculum. Due to time restrictions, they struggle with

fitting this into their time block they have. There is a grammar curriculum they have
available. I asked if the regular education teachers had issues with trying to fit in their

grammar lessons, and Mrs. Spudy was unsure. However, she said that all the special

needs teachers struggle with fitting it in efficiently. She gave me the information I was to

teach next week, since its the beginning of a new unit. I would like to try and take the

information I have, and create some sort of interactive game that allows the students to do

some more free writing, or be engaged in some sort of game or experience.

One thing that was not academic related, however I felt was interesting,

was a new system Hempfield recently implemented. All teachers now have an app on

their phone called MERM. MERM stands for Mobile Emergency Response Messages.

Mrs. Spudy was showing me the app, explaining the parts of it, and how it works. There

are different emergencies that can be sent out as an alert to teachers. Teachers or

administration can also send messages (there were test messages going through). There

was options for I believe fire, intruder, and active shooter. In light of recent events, I

felt that this app could definitely be effective and help keep the school safe. I know when

I was in high school there was an armed intruder. There was an announcement on the

loud speaker that said Dr. Doyle is in the building. Dr. Doyle was a former

administrator for the district. This was their code for intruder, so it didnt help to see all

of the teachers panicking and hurrying students inside of their classroom. With this app,

teachers are able to safely and hopefully calmly do what they need to do in the event of

an emergency. It will be interesting to see how future technology or procedures are

developed as time goes on, since it already has changed so much since I was in school.