EDE 4504 BLOG 3, EDE 4941 SUPERVISOR/CT REFLECTION & EDP 3273 REFLECTION 5

Darby Bernaldo
Oct 17, 2017
9 min read

The routine that I chose to do for my first Supervisor/CT Observation and third reflective blog was lead a morning meeting. The CT does not perform this routine. Every morning she has the kindergarten aid come to the classroom and leads their calendar math and morning meeting routine. When the aid walks into the room, she tells all the children that they need to finish their breakfast and head to the carpet. She tells them to walk over quietly, sit on their own square, and put their spoons in their bowl. This is another way of saying keep your hands in-between your legs. If the students are being loud she uses an attention getter such as “Class! Class!” or “Waterfall, waterfall…” When all the students are quiet, she gets started with calendar math. She asks the students what the previous, current and next day will be. She calls on a student that is raising their hand and sitting quietly. After this, they go to the calendar and add another number to the chart. Then they count from the first day of the month to whatever day they are currently on. When calendar math is over, she has them stand up and greet each other. Then she reads the morning message to the students. This gives them insight to the group activity they will be doing. They each get a turn to share something that is on their minds. Next, they move on to the group activity. She usually has them listen to some educational songs and dance around. This gets the wiggles and giggles out of the students before they must stay seated and quiet for a few hours. Once the meeting is over, she calls on the students by table to go back to their seats before handing it back over to the teacher.

One of the kindergarten teachers had a training at a different school to attend. We ended up getting three of her students for the day. I knew this would be a challenge but I was ready to do my best. The kindergarten aid still wanted to lead the calendar math portion. So once she was done, we switched over and I started on the Morning Meeting. The students were a little talkative and distracted since there were new children in our classroom. When they realized that I was going to be doing the Morning Meeting, it got chaotic, but I reeled them back in by telling them good morning (0:08). I went over the procedures and expectations of the site word greeting activity and passed out the name tags. The students walked around and began greeting each other by the name on the tags instead of their name (2:05). At the end of the greeting activity, the students were acting out a little, but they were still following the basic expectations and procedures that I put in place (3:01). They were enjoying this greeting so much that the first time I tried to get their attention, I failed. I used the attention getter “Class, class!” and they all responded and quieted down (3:56). Once they were all sitting back down and I had their full attention, we began going over the site words that were found in the Morning Message. I called upon the students that were raising their hand quietly to circle the site word with a crayon. My behavioral problem/ special needs student began to act out at because I would not call on her (6:13). Unfortunately, she is not all caught up on her site words so I knew it wouldn’t be a great idea to call on her. I tried to handle her in the best way possible, but you could tell she was not receptive to it. My CT had to intervene because this student was about to have a melt down and there was no way I could handle her and the class at the same time (6:43). I moved on to the share portion of the Morning Meeting and I started calling on students to tell me their favorite foods. I had a shy child that refused to speak (8:39). I sat there for a couple seconds to see if she would respond, but by that point, the children were already out of control. I reeled them back in twice. The first time I kept their attention for around 30 seconds (9:15). I realized two of the three students from the other teacher’s classroom would not speak so I tried to quickly get passed them and through the rest of the students (10:15). I knew once we got to the group activity it would get a lot better. After everyone was done sharing, I had the students stand up and we started playing “Miss Bernaldo says.” I only planned for three rounds of this activity, but the children were enjoying it so much that we ended up playing an extra round. When we were done with the activity I had them sit back down on the carpet. I began to collect everyone’s name tags and dismissed students by table back to their seats (15:20). This concluded my Morning Meeting. During this routine, I completed FEAPs 2a, 2e and 2f successfully. I displayed 2a by setting the procedures for the lesson in place, seeing the students following them (1:55) and completing the routine in a timely fashion. I displayed 2e by reading my message and having them to raise their hands quietly to come circle site words on the poster (5:35). Lastly, I displayed 2f when they came up and told me how they were feeling about their friends not treating them nicely (4:14).

The aspects of my lesson that were implemented differently were the share time and group activity. Instead of calling on students that had their hands raised nicely, I just started going row by row on the carpet during share time (8:31). We also played an extra round on the group activity (14:13). In that moment, I realized I would not be able to remember who I called upon already and I was bound to leave someone out if I jumped around from student to student. Also, the students were enjoying the game so much that I believed adding an extra round of “Miss Bernaldo says” would help me keep their attention and get them back to their seats easier once it was over. If I was going to teach this lesson to the students again, I would use the pair share method instead of group share because that is when I really lost the student’s focus. I was surprised at how well the students were doing with the greeting activity. I thought this would be the most difficult part of the lesson for them, not the share time. They were reading the site words on their friend’s shirts and going along with what I had planned. I was curious to see if most of the class would follow the procedures and expectations with this, and they did.

When I performed this routine, it impacted my students greatly. They still get excited about me leading lessons so it tends to make them wild. I have not gained total respect from the classroom so, therefore, the students occasionally do not listen when I give them directions. I achieved my desired result for this management routine. I knew that it was going to be difficult with the added students in the classroom. The fact that every planned activity was completed and they all enjoyed the lesson, this exceeded my expectations. The developmental level of my students impacted how I planned the lesson by incorporating the site words that all the children knew. I realized that this would help keep everyone engaged during the site word portion of the lesson. I also had them say what their favorite food was instead of what the aid has them typically share. I believe it would have taken too long this way.

The students in my classroom struggled to keep their attention on the routine that I was performing. I decided to turn to my educational psychology book to find out why. I discovered that attention, according to EdPsych Modules, is defined as, “the process of focusing on certain aspects of the environment” (Durwin & Reese-Webber, 2017, p.190). Children lose focus when there is too much stimuli in their environment and I believe that this was my problem during the Morning Meeting. The fact that there were new students in the class and they were trying to listen to my lecture, they were over taken by the distractions. My students were over-stimulated and that is why I lost their attention. How can a teacher limit stimulation during a lesson like this? Another thing to consider is the act of the students processing what they are being told. There are two different types of processing these students use every day, automatic and effortful. The students were required to use effortful processing because these tasks within the Morning Meeting and me facilitating it myself, were new to them. My CT limits her disruptions in the classroom and stays on top of the students while doing new things. Limiting disruptions is something I did not take into consideration when performing my routine. These students have not developed selective or divided attention just yet. This means they still can’t focus on one thing and ignore other distractions as well as focus on multiple stimuli at one time. So, when they are trying to focus on one thing, everything around them serves as a distraction. Is there a way to help children develop selective and divided attention sooner than their adolescent years?

Even though it was chaotic at times, the students did what was intended of them during this lesson. This was supposed to be a refresher of their site words and to see how much they remembered. The students effectively read and greeted their friends by the sight word on their name tag and recognized the site words on the message post as well. My teaching actions were effective when I was grabbing their attention and doing the site word greeting procedures and expectations review. I know this because they followed each of the directions I gave them very well. It was not until I struggled to give clear directions that the student had a hard time listening and doing what I had intended. My instructional materials were effective by using the name tags for the social greeting and the poster to complete the site word lesson. I had to accommodate students that have a speech delay and special needs into my lesson. You can see me talking with each of these students so they did not feel left out by any of their classmates (2:46). These are the only two students that I feel had a difficulty with the lesson. They both struggle to successfully communicate so this frustrated them during the greeting and share time. In my classroom, I will give students the necessary attention so they do not feel left out. It would even be beneficial to lead a student or two over their direction and facilitate a discussion. The students that did well in this lesson were two I was not expecting. They did not speak out of turn or get off task during the Morning Meeting which is very uncharacteristic of them. I believe they were successful because they understood the expectations I had set in place for them and respected me enough to listen to all of them.

The next steps for me is to begin commanding the attention of the classroom more frequently. The more they see me as a teacher, the easier it will get for me as I try to teach them lessons in the future. I will use this information by referring to how I did not set clear expectations for half of the lesson. When a teacher sets proper expectations, this ensures that his/her class will know what they are doing and be less likely to stray from what is intended to be learned.

The important thing I learned by engaging in this routine was the effectiveness of pair sharing instead of group sharing. I believe that if I was to have the students pair up with their shoulder partner to talk about the favorite food, it would not have gotten as out of control. My CT talked to me about the Kagan method and how it has been beneficial for her in the last couple years of teaching kindergarten. This creates less distractions for the students and is easier to get their attention back when the activity is over. I believe this task partially met the developmental needs of my students. The academic side of the lesson was done well, but the students began to lose focus during social time. This is when I realized that I did not take their age and attention spans into consideration. The greeting and the group activity went well because it kept them engaged the whole time. What did not go well was the transition from the greeting time to the Morning Message/share time. Students started to come up to me and began tattling on the other students in the class (4:17). This caused more students to become distracted and not follow the procedures and expectations I put in place. My behavioral problem/special needs child began to lash out because I would not call on her to circle a site word (6:13). I did what my CT told me to and calmly addressed her, but she just kept building up to the point that my CT realized a full-blown tantrum was about to occur. Another instance that did not go well was during share time, I lost almost all the student’s attention because I was calling on them individually and not managing the class (9:09). Next time, I would engage in the routine differently by doing a pair share instead of with the group. I also would make sure I get the student’s attention even when it is only a few that are talking when they aren’t supposed to. If you do not stop the first few students, that is when it starts to get out of control.