High School Classroom Observation

On Monday, March 13th, I observed one of the six 2nd grade classes at John F. Kennedy Magnet School in Port Chester, New York. There were twenty-three students in this class, ten girls and thirteen boys. 96% of the students were Hispanic, ten of them were English Language Learners, and six of them had IEPs. The classroom’s educational team consisted of Ms. B. the general education teacher, Ms. P. the special education teacher, Ms. I the teaching assistant, and Ms. G. the teacher aide. The second-grade classrooms are all located in the upper building. This building is not connected to the lower building; therefore, all specials are held during the first period to avoid educators going up and down the buildings’ connecting outdoor steps. This
classroom was very spacious, there were cubbies at the entryway for each child. It featured a bathroom and a small gardening area located in one of the classroom’s corners. Ms. B had arrange the desks in groups of 6, there were 4 desktops in the classroom along one side of the room, an area for using tablets, a reading corner, and a big area rug in front of the SMART board. Ms. B, Ms. I, and Ms. W each had a separate working area in the classroom. This school uses the Responsive Classroom approach.
This approach emphasizes academic, social, and emotional growth in a strong school community. The main practices of this approach are morning meeting, establishing rules, energizers, quiet time, and closing circle. Even though Science class was taught in the first period, their day officially started with the morning meeting. The children gathered in the large group area, greeted each other, had a small activity, and got the morning message from Ms. B. She also gave them the schedule of the day, and the rotation stations they were going to be working on that morning. The children are separated into four groups; blue, green, red, and orange. The students that needed extra help are part of the last two groups and are assisted by the general education teacher, special education teacher, or the teaching assistant in most rotations. The morning rotations were focused on reading and writing. There were five children in the red group, three of them had IEPs, and two were ELL students. Miguel is one of these students, he understands a little bit of Spanish, mainly speaks one of the Native Mayan Languages, and has been attending this school since February. Allan is the other ELL student in this group, he only speaks Spanish and has been attending this school since January. Ms. P had shared that the children who had IEPs in that class, either had a learning disability, or speech language impairment. This group began rotations with
Ms. I. She gave Miguel his handwriting workbook, so he can trace some letters, while she worked on the lesson with the other children. She began the lesson with dictation, and asked them to write the words and underline each letter after they wrote it down. She asked Allan if he understood, but he didn’t, so she explained it to him in Spanish. Because I also speak Spanish, I was able to notice through out the day that Allan is a bright little boy. When she finished the dictation, she asked them to check their own work by looking at the right answers on the white board. While the children were working, Ms. I gave directions to Miguel in Spanish. He is currently working at Kindergarten level, so his work is very different than the rest of the students. She checked his work, and read along the letters that he had traced. They also worked on reading comprehension. Before Ms. I began reading the story she identified the different parts of the book. She explained the meaning of new words by using examples and clip art pictures on a tablet. They each got their homework and went to the next rotation. Miguel got a different homework each day, and Ms. I explained it to him individually. The red group went to media station to listen to books online, Miguel and Allan worked on a different program than the other students in the red group. They were working on letter recognition and letter sounds on the laptops.
The orange group also had children with IEPs and ELL students, but this group was not as severe as the red one, so they worked on different skills.
The third rotation for the red group was the resource room with the special education teacher. The children entered the resource classroom and were given small group reading instruction. In the middle of the rotations, all the children are given quiet time and are allowed to eat a small snack. Ms. G joined the class at this time. Once they were done with all the rotations they gathered around the large group area for an energizer activity, followed by lunchtime and indoor recess. The afternoon continued with the children gathered around the large group area where Ms. B gave them directions for the math rotation stations. Ms. G helped Miguel with the different work Ms. B had set for him. He didn’t go around all the stations like everyone else. The children with IEPs did rotations, including one with Ms. P who did a small group Math lesson with them. All the children knew what group they were in, where they needed to go, and what they needed to do at each station. Ms. B. mentioned the children were not able to follow directions or work well in the rotation stations at the beginning of the school year. It took them two months to understand how the stations
worked. Overall, this was a great classroom to observe. I was able to witness how teachers can respectfully collaborate in a classroom, by supporting and helping each other when needed. The number of educators in the classroom was higher than usual because of the number of children with IEPs. Most classrooms only have a general education teacher, having at least two teachers in the classroom made it easier to differentiate instruction and meet the students’ needs. The Responsive Classroom Approach Ms. B uses, gives her the opportunity to help her students stay on task, organize and manage her classroom, effectively teach every child, and build a strong classroom community that inspires her students to do their best work and thrive in class.