Due to the hurricane that decided to grace Florida with its presence, schools in Hillsborough County were cancelled last Friday and Monday was a Non-Student Day which granted teachers and students a four day weekend! As much as everyone enjoyed their unexpected time off from school, it set things back. It was noticeable that my CT was very overwhelmed when I walked into the classroom Tuesday morning as I watched her transition from one task to the next as she gathered papers, checked her email, and searched for items in preparation for the student's arrival. However she did not let the impact of the four day weekend show as students walked in and greeted her. I have always said that teachers are in indeed superheroes in disguise. In the end, they realize that they have a job to do and they will accomplish it by any means necessary without a complaint or display of fatigue. They will push their personal feelings to the side to ensure that everything is in place for their class and that the students are taught properly.
The lesson that stood out to me today required the students to develop a passage based on their individual notes that they wrote while reading a story about elephants. My CT realized that producing a topic sentence was very complicated for the first graders as they continued to tell her statements that would serve as details rather than a general statement. For instance, students would raise their hand and say, "Elephants walk on four legs" or "Elephants have wrinkly skin." I commended them for trying to come up with their own sentence although they couldn't really differentiate between what would be considered a detail and what could bring it all together. As a result, she created three topic sentences that they could use to begin their paragraphs. Almost every Tuesday, I am granted the opportunity to work one on on one or in a small group that includes my focus student Jennifer (pseudonym). Today during this activity of producing a paragraph based on personal notes taken after reading a story, I noticed that she was struggling with spelling. She frequently confuses b and d while writing and misspells words even if they are provided in the text. I encouraged her to always refer back to the story that she read to see if the word that she wants to use is in the book. As I observed her writing, I reflected on a moment that I witnessed her reading independently. I discovered that she uses a personal tactic that includes the aid of the picture that is provided on the page to figure out an unfamiliar word rather than using context clues from the text that she read or morphemic knowledge (prefixes, suffixes and root words). For instance, while she was reading independently during center time, I asked her to read the story aloud. When she encountered a word that she did not know, she would mumble lowly or bypass it completely. I proceeded to stop her and ask her to repeat the word. I then noticed her personal tactic; the particular word was shirt but when she glanced at the photograph, she was under the impression that it was a sweater so that is what she plugged into the sentence. I decided to make that a learning moment by helping her stretch out every unfamiliar word that she came across and encouraged her to re-read the sentence multiple times before moving on to the next so when she came across the word again (which she did) she would know it.
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