Last week, I observed Mrs. G's class at River City Elementary School. Her paraprofessonial, Mrs. M, speaks Spanish, so she is always on hand to help the ESOL students in the class. I was only able to spend about an hour observing the class on Wednesday due to scheduling conflicts, but I have subbed for the teacher before and have been able to get an idea about how things are run in the classroom.
One of the first things I noticed about Mrs. G's class is the variety of materials the students have access to. Items such as the door, the calendar, and the wastebasket are all labeled with pictures and the name of the object printed in English. There are also classroom sets of picture dictionaries/thesauruses, many of which have copies printed in other languages. The classroom library is organized by genre, (i.e. fantasy), non-fiction/fiction books, (i.e. science), and popular children's book series, (i.e. The Boxcar Children). A basket for multi-cultural stories is also available.
The walls of the classroom are covered with posters. Mrs. G teaches reading, writing, and some social studies to her 2 different groups of students, (another teacher teaches them math and science. The students switch rooms before they go to lunch each day, and again in the afternoon before the extra hour and dismissal.) There are very few places around the room where you can actually see the wall. Above the white board at the front of the room, Mrs. G has posters that have examples of different graphic organizers that the students can use. Since I couldn't take any pictures of these without disrupting the lesson, I found a teacher's edition of a workbook that had a couple of examples of graphic organizers.
My favorite posters in the classroom were the Literacy Genre posters that were displayed on the windows in the back of the classroom. There were 2 different posters that displayed this information for the students. One of the posters gave a description of each genre, and another one included both a description and an example of a book from the genre. I have always loved to read, so naturally, this is a display that I would proudly have in my classroom!
Vocabulary is an important concept when it comes to reading. Learning new words helps you to better understand the context of a book or text. Mrs. G's classroom includes several examples of vocabulary. She has 2 Word Walls, (one on the door that connects to another teacher's classroom, and one on the whiteboard beside this door), that have dozens of new words that the students have learned throughout the school year. A small poster on the side of a wardrobe displays "100 Tricky Words", (words that students have difficulty spelling). The whiteboard behind the computers has a piece of chart paper that includes vocabulary words about spiders. I love this poster because it has a picture for each word, (a great strategy for teaching ELLs how to read in English). Each group table has several copies of student dictionaries so the students can learn the meanings of each new word.
Above the whiteboard Word Wall, there are a few smaller posters that include different test taking strategies. The students will be taking the new Common Core test next month, so these strategies will help them succeed and relax when it comes time for them to take the new assessment. These posters include strategies such as "Jail the Detail" and "Slash the Trash" (for multiple choice tests).
The lesson itself on the day I visited was nothing unusual. Mrs. G was reviewing the answers to a worksheet the students had completed that was based on the novel they are reading, (The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo). She called on students from each group to give their answers and promote class discussion. The worksheet with the correct answers was displayed on the projector so everyone could see it. The students will be taking a unit test when they have finished reading the novel. New vocabulary words from each chapter of the novel are posted on the board along with the definitions for the benefit of the students.
