Tuesday Experience (Week Five)

This week when I went to my Tuesday Field Experience I observed and took part in a lot of actitives that our book talks about, and also topics that we have talked about and learned in class. I always like when I am able to connect our text and classwork to outside field experiences, I have included some of my findings int he blog.

This tuesdays field studey started off quickly when the students came in a were told to get right to work on their morning work. Today’s morning work involved reading and interpreting the text. Students had to read through a passage critically and correct what needed to be corrected in the passage. This is helping the students develop there reading and writing skills. Tompkins say in our text that it is crucial for students to read and analyzes other pieces of work and that this will help improve there own writing. Once students have had sometime to work alone they go over the worksheet as a class. I have learned form the text and within my Language arts class that it is god to go over worksheets as a class because then he students can see the correct way to write. Students can take what they learned during this short and brief lesson and apply it to there own writing.

During the Reading And Writing Workshops today students either worked by themselves or in a small group with Mrs. Dibble. In Tompkins it is mentioned the reading and writing workshops are important to use in the classroom. Within this section of the text on page 41talks about important strengths that go along with the reading and writing workshops they include: Students are able to read a book on their reading level independently, the teacher is able to work with the student independently. My teacher is doing exactly this. I have noticed that my teacher is able to accomplish a lot during this time of the day and so are students. During the writing workshop student worked independently on their own snowman stories and Mrs. Dibble conference with student who were ready to revise their snowman stories.

Another part of the day was for spelling. Every week students are give new spelling words that they have to learn for the week. Mrs. Dibble went over tem for the first time today with the students. I was glad to see that Mrs. Dibble takes spelling seriously in the classroom, because in our text on page 164, Tompkins states that vocabulary is an important part of language arts for all student especially the ones that struggle with language. I was able to connect this part to the classroom that I am in because there area few students that struggle with language in Mrs. Dibbles class. I have been able to sit down with one of these students throughout the day today and work with him on these words and other words. Tompkins states on page164 that pronouncing words correctly and understanding words meaning, and being able to comprehend that by using It in a sentence is crucial. I was doing just this when I was working with the students. We were breaking down the words in syllables, spelling them and then using them in a sentence. After working with a struggling student on this, I agree with Tompkins that by conduct this with a student who is struggling with spelling and word sentence structure that this really helps them understand and comprehend the words better.

When Tompkins talks about assessment in the book she outlines very useful ways for a teacher to do this. On page 52 of our text there is a list of some of the assessment tools, they are as follows: document milestones in students language and literacy development, identify students strengths on order to plan for instructions, and document the students ability through projects. I feel that my teacher does all of these three assessment strategies with her class. I observed today her doing one of these. My teacher is always conferencing with students during their DEAR time. This is when she is able to check for the students language and literacy developments. She often has a student read a chapter from a book or a passage while she conduct a running record on them. I have learned through Tompkins and our text last semester that Running Record are important and a great way to assess students reading and comprehension abilities. These should be done as often as they can and when ever there is free time to do them. Mrs. Dibble seems to always have time for these and I have found that it is a good practice.

Another good practice that I saw today in class was during the students “shared reading” time. Tompkins talks about shared reading on page 103, saying that it is important for students to talk about books and connect the books to themselves, another, book , and to other things in the world. When students do this they are digging deeper into the story therefore that are using their “higher-level” thanking skills. During this part of the day students broke up into there reading group sand talked about the book. They shared things about the book with each other. I was able to sit in on one of the groups. I found that This didn’t only benefit the students, like Tompkins talked about, but it also was something they enjoyed doing as well. Usually during this group time students are given a worksheet that they need to fill out so they the teacher knows that they were being productive that day. This is a good practice that Tompkins talks about on page 78.