Day 1-Observing Mrs. Brown's Third Grad Class

For the first time this morning, I got the chance to oberserve a third grade classroom at Charleston Development Academy Public Charter. This is a much smaller elementary school than I am used to, with only one class per grade, ranging from k-6 (I think). I was very impressed with how formal the school is and their expectations of the students in regards to manners, and how they treat one another. Everyone said hello, and greeted eachother in the morning, which did not mean mumbling good morning while looking at the ground, but instead looking someone directly in the eyes and saying hello in an upbeat manner. All of the children also said excuse me and thank you. I was shown to my room by a 5th grade girl, who was very polite and walked me right to my classroom. I noticed that on the walls of the room there were posters hanging with class rules and expected bahavior as well as posters that focused on positive statements and attitudes in learning.


Mrs. Brown was working on a weekly newsletter when I arrived that she sends home to parents to update them on what they are learning and the assignments they have planned for the week. I think that is a great idea, and very helpful to get the parents involved or informed so that they can ideally help the child with homework if they need it or further develope those skills at home. After Liza and I spoke with the teacher regarding our lesson planning and what the class was working on, the entire school crowded into our one classroom for a monthly meeting. They first said the pledge of allegiance and sang,"My Country 'Tis of Thee". They they said a memorized speech that was a pledge that they repeated based on the school expectations and standards they strive to meet.


After the meeting was over the students took the math section of a bench test, which is a test that is given to them every 9 weeks, across all grades, that helps to assess their progress. The kids were given the choice of taking either math or reading, and overwhelming the majority voted for math. After the children seperated their desks, which were arranged into groups of 4-5 students, they took the math section of the test. When they were finished they read silently until the rest of the class was done. A popular book I saw being read was, "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs", which happens to be one of my personal favorites. After everyone was done, the teacher reviewed the idea of contractiuons with the kids using the website "BrainPop" and took a practice test as a class through an interactive website program. The kids got most of the answers right, which was expected since it was review from something they learned the previous year. Then the teacher introduced the idea of possessive nouns and the different between possessive nouns and contractions, and how they can be commonly confused. They also discussed their more recent topic which is punctuation and worked on generating questions in their work books. Mrs. Borwn had them list words that you can start a sentence with when asking a question, like: what, where, when, why, how, who, is, are, etc., before they started the activity. As they worked, the teacher, the 2 assistant teachers, Liza, and I, walked around and helped the kids if they needed help or checked over their work with them if they were finished. Those who were done early read. Next was silent reading, while Liza and I gave our spelling assesments. After assesments, the class started to read a story together that was focused on sequence (a current theme they are looking at). Before they read the story in their reader, they looked through the pictures and discussed what they thought the story might be about. The theme of this story was moving to a new home. The teacher also asked the children to share memories of moving and how it made them feel and why. Many kids shared with the class.


I also watched the bahavior of the children and noticed that like it is often suggested, in this classroom, most of the boys seemed to be bussier and needed to move around more than the girls. I watched one one read a book standing up out of his seat, leaning onto his desk during silent reading. I also noticed some trends in the class. For girls, trends seemed to be: Hannah Montana backpacks, pink clothing (bright and light pink), pink fatigue print and peace signs, sparkly things, hearts, and stars, and pink and white nike shoes. The boys were very into "Air Jordan" and wore basketball shoes. They also had either black backpacks or backpacks with things with tansformers on them. The boys also had jackets that were inspired by military bomber leather jackets, motorcylce jackets, or letterman jackets. I also saw a lot of "tamed/younger down punk-rock" trend in their accessories that is inspired by older teens trends. I have decided to note this because of our pop culture project in lang and lit. It was more difficult to judge this in this school thoufgh becuase the students wear uniforms, so unless they were wearing a swearshirt or accessory, it was hard to tell a lot about each student. I think that uniforms are a great idea. I know some people don't, but I think it levels the playing field to some degree, when it comes to socioeconomic backgrounds of students and helps to prevent people from judging others on a superficial level. After working in the fashion world, trust me when I say, this is a GREAT aspect important values that is great to promote in a classroom community.