Academic Support in Carrboro Elementary

Since I do not have any EC students in my class, I did not know what to expect when I went to the EC specialists room for an observation. My classroom has one visually impaired student and we have a resource teacher come into the room during Literacy Centers and Math Centers. One thing that is noted with the resource teacher is that our IEP student does not need extra academic help, rather when there are assignments that require vision or obstacles the resource teacher will help. The resource teacher has also been very helpful with two other students in my class that my teacher has filled out an IEP request form. So as I stated before I did not know what to expect.

The only background information that I was given before the observation was that we were going to observe fifth graders. My initial reaction was that it was going to be a group, but when we arrived there were two Hispanic males and math was the subject of the meeting.

The first thing that I noticed in the room was the size and setup. It was very interesting to see a small room with a large SMARTboard in the front. The students were seated at a bean shaped table, the teacher on the inside and the students on the outside. There was a movie playing on the SMARTboard as the teacher was trying to find a scene to relate to the students. Finally the scene appeared and paused with a man thinking. The teacher then asked the boys for their thinking faces and asked them to show each other. The chairs that the boys sat in had ties around the bottom for them to put their feet against, in my opinion to stop them from swinging their legs. The room was very colorful with signs, posters with inspiration, ABC charts and all the birthdays of the students that receive help from the resource teachers. The students were very close to the SMARTboard and a white board to the left.

When we entered the teacher was explaining the math worksheet that the two boys were completing. She let them know that the worksheet was in English, but later when they went back to class they would receive one in Spanish. After our observation we asked her about the students, they are in the Dual Language program, so they receive math instruction in Spanish. Since she does not speak Spanish they have to work math in English with her and then they go back to class. In the resource room they go over the lesson of the day so that the boys will be prepared for the lesson when they get back to class. The boys attend 3 hours per day with the teacher and they concentrate on literacy, social studies and math.

Since the students were working on division, they began by looking at the relationship between multiplication and division. The resource teacher praised both the students for their knowledge in multiplication; she called them “awesome”. They then worked a few problems to look at the relationship between the two operations. The teacher recommended that the students created pictures for their problems, for example 6 / 3 =? The students drew six objects in three boxes and found the answer to be two. I noticed that the students were very quick to guess the answer. They called out random answers in order to bet one another, whether they knew the answer or not. She then got the students to write the relationships between the applications and think about their multiplication times tables. After that they were presented with a division times table and then highlighted every other column to differentiate. The students then worked out their questions using the times tables but when asked for the answer, they randomly shouted out the first answer that came to their mind.

One problem that was noted with just the two students was the interaction between the students and the teacher. One student had to be consistently holding an object or he would take another object from the other student. The students also would bicker back and forth between each other about an answer; “It is right” “No it isn’t” “Yes” “No” “Yes” “No”. This continued for about 20 seconds until the teacher stopped the students. The students still got their work done after the interruption.

One thing that I noticed was the way that the boys said that they were confused and the teacher ignored them by asking a question that she knew they would get correct. This was a way to position the students to be mathematically competent and make the students feel that they were able to succeed in their math. The students also were asked to dictate how they worked out the problem and the reasoning behind their choices. The teacher found a way to praise the students and let them feel as if they accomplished something in the classroom.

At the end of the lesson the students were able to play a computer game with both students involved. One student would enter the answers on the keyboard and another student would talk to the teacher, then they would switch. The computer game was an incentive for the students to finish their worksheet and then to go to their specials.

The observation was very beneficial and it made me think about different strategies to use with students in the classroom. I really enjoyed how personable the teacher was with the students and I could see that she really enjoyed and cared about working with the males students.