School Prac Visit 2

Ah yes! I was truly proud of myself on the morning of Wednesday 24th March. I had made my lunch of falafel, semi-dried tomato and fetta dolmades, sumac-spiced fennel salad and Israeli hommus - and packed it all neatly into my lunchbox. Ok, so I probably cheated in my food preparation skills (falafel was a pre-packaged mix requiring only the addition of water and dolmades were canned) and went a little too far with the 'Israeli' Hommus but I do swear by its unique, smokey undertone, smooth texture and great flavour - thankyou Bondi Fruitologist! My mug was carefully placed in my bag (I was informed that sharing mugs in the teacher staffroom was a 'pet hate' and strictly a 'No-No') and my clothes chosen (and tried on) from the previous evening. No dramas here today. I left on time and was at school within 45 minutes.

It was straight to the assembly hall again this morning for prayers and a music performance. We were joined by several parents of the students who gathered proudly to watch their children sing and perform to the song of 'Old MacDonald' and listen to a select few play the violin. I must admit that I was quite impressed by these budding violinists as I do have a professional violinist in the family and this stringed instrument can and does require the use of fine motor skill to play.

I noted that the significance of today's student visit however, was the assembly performance of the song, Old MacDonald. During my first prac visit I noted the students were learning to read a picture book about a family living on a farm. This leads me to discuss the importance of reading and the strategies used to successfully build the semantic knowledge of students in language /reading development. I also observed that the same book was used to draw on other various useful materials related to life on a farm as a means of developing skills across curriculums, therefore further enhancing and building student knowledge in these other areas in a way that was applicable. However, since the focus here is about developing reading skills my observations led me to conclude that the strategy adopted was one that was very similar to the whole-part-whole model of reading. My colleague teacher had built up the knowledge of the elements associated with reading (semantic, syntactic, graphophonic and paralinguistic) by engaging the students in various activities related to the large picture book as well as drawing on other resources (e.g. cloze word activities, word bingo,visual illustrations of animals and associating sounds made by them, You-tube movie clips about farm life and learning of song Old MacDonald, student own storybook creations and other activities etc). In addition, the big book was used to focus on a letter(s), 'M/m' and 'D/d' for example, and then Ss asked to complete written worksheets where the T demonstrated how to write the letter, to complete sentences with words beginning with the letter (in both upper and lower case instances), colour illustrations where the object in the picture began with the letter and to think of and write words beginning with the letter. All words were verbally repeated to draw attention to the sound-symbol relationship. References were made to specific parts of 'the book' depending on the purpose of the activity. In most cases, except where writing skills needed to be demonstrated, the activities were organised as such that students were divided into groups and allocated a workstation. Ss spent an allocated time at each workstation until all tasks were completed. There was one activity in which I questioned the effectiveness in developing Ss reading skills. I was supervising an activity that involved Ss reading the book, Dan the Flying Man. This book contains many rhyming words and was previously studied in class. Upon asking the Ss to read a page each I noted that some pupils didn’t really read the text but simply learned the words by heart. I tested this by asking the S to point to specific words, which the S was unable to do correctly in most cases. It made me question whether short stories containing text that rhymed were a good idea in teaching the novice reader to read.

During writing tasks, the T, assistant T and I roamed the classroom to observe, assist and mark worksheets. Contrary to what we were told about using a red pen in EDFD 529 tutorials, I found that this was the preferred colour used by my colleague teacher. The process of marking included underlining or circling incorrect words, or letters not written properly (including when asking Ss to demonstrate their writing skills). Written comments were not really made explaining errors though discussion in my class tutorial won me over in that this was a very good idea and would enable parents to acknowledge where their child's weaknesses lay so as to be able to provide further assistance when worksheets were taken home. As for Digital Natives, I have yet to see any strong evidence of this in my kindergarten classroom. At home however, this may be a different story.

Following lunch, an interesting incident occurred. A S was upset because they claimed to have lost their fork. The S pointed out that another pupil from the class had taken it. I must be honest in admitting that I probably would not have been able to address this issue effectively. My colleague teacher however, managed to get to the truth fairly quickly. She asked both Ss to state the food items they had for lunch. From this list, she was easily able to deduce which of the two Ss was telling the truth. Is this the early signs of bullying behaviour? The pupil that lied was sent to sit away from all the other pupils in the class during the following lesson. The humiliation endured from the T questioning in front of all the other Ss in my opinion, was enough to make this pupil behave for the rest of the day.

The final thing noted on this particular day occurred in mathematics. Ss were introduced to the concept of time. This particular lesson did not involve numeracy. Ss were asked to look at photos of activites performed during the morning and afternoon (eg. sleeping, waking, eating breakfast, brushing teeth etc). To make the lesson a little more interesting, the T asked the Ss to choose an activity from the selection of photos to 'act out' in front of their peers. The other Ss were to guess the activity performed. The interesing thing to note was that most Ss were unable to effectively and convincingly 'act out' the activity chosen. Initially I had put this down to poor acting skills of ES1 however, upon further discussion with my colleague teacher back at the staffroom, she concluded that children today spend most of their day in various instutional settings where their actions and activities are dictated by others (eg. tutors, instructors etc) or simply spent in front of a screen watching television or playing video games. Parents' lack of encouragement to allow their children to play freely outdoors where their children may develop social skills and motor skills that do not mimic robotic movements, contributed to a generation of children that do not know how to freely express themselves. This comment gave me something to think about. I must take note for future reference to confirm whether this view is correct.

My next two prac visits are in week 8. Friday 23rd is the day I teach my first mathematics lesson. The focus is to develop Ss understanding in distinguishing between thick and thin. I can't compete with 20 years of teaching experience (that is, my colleague teacher) but I am curious to see how I go. Stay posted!