3. How does the teacher engage students in thinking? (I.e. Are the students doing the thinking?) If not, what would you do to encourage their thinking?
5. What types of instructional methods are being used?
Mrs. Afeld does a great job communicating with her students and bringing them into the learning process. In every activity I have seen they are constantly asked divergent questions. Their responses are all different and unique which brings different aspects and opportunities for more discussion. Even during independent reading they are encouraged to think about their reading. One day each student was given 3 sticky notes and throughout their reading time they were asked to make a connection to the story and write it down and stick it on the page that they made the connection about. They did this independently without the help of the teacher. It was so great to see them all thinking about their reading. The next day in carpet time they were asked to share their connections or things they found interesting about their reading.
One day they were reading a poem about leaves and they stopped after each phrase to discuss the meaning. The children were talking about how the leaves were falling and using their hands to show the description they had in their mind. It was neat to hear them share about their experiences. Because they are aloud to think out loud often, they were not acting out of control.
Another thing that the teacher does is allows her students to monitor their time. She announces what their task is, how they will need to prepare themselves, and how much time they will have to complete the assignment. When it is close to the given time she will ask the students to tell her what time it is, then she will say now what do you know is happening soon, and then says this means that we should be close to being finished with …. and ready for…. and what do you need to do to prepare yourselves for this. The children know their task, know how to prepare and know how much time they have to complete the assignment.
The students are constantly challenged to think. The class did an interactive writing where they created their classroom rules. I thought this was such a good idea. It caused them to think about what would be acceptable classroom behavior and how they would act. Since they created these rules, they know what is required of them and therefore have no excuse for misbehaving. Since they were the ones who created the rules then they are more inclined to follow and enforce them.
In every teaching opportunity the thinking is directed to the children. They are constantly challenged to problem solve through conversation, and many balanced literacy activities such as read alouds, shared readings, interactive writings, independent reading, reading groups, journal writing etc. Read alouds are almost an everyday activity. During this teacher student interactions are full of discussions. The teacher uses methods such as making connections, drawing pictures in your head, sharing with your partner etc. She also will discuss something new that the children have not learned and after they have talked about it she has her students turn to one another and summarize what they had just learned. The techniques used are very creative and simple.
Discussion is another type of instructional method used. This method is designed to encourage thinking skills. It allows learners to increase interpersonal skills. The main instructional method that I observed was balanced literacy. She implemented balanced literacy by incorporating a lot of reading and writing activities on a daily basis. The teacher models some reading and writing tasks and others are done with support from the teacher, which leads to some that are done independently by the child. Journaling is one of the methods that are done independently by the child. The children are encouraged to think, reason, and problem solve throughout all of the different instructional methods.
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