Starting the Day with Literacy
This class begins daily with at soft start. This provides students with a gentle entry point into the school day, allowing students to ease into their learning environment. This can benefit students who may experience anxiety or school-avoidance behaviour. In this particular class we visited their soft start was a multi-curricular worksheet. As students trickle in they organize themselves, say “hi” to the teacher and a few friends, then they sit at their assigned table and begin their morning work. There is not a huge expectation to have it 100% completed, because when the time is up the teacher will go over the worksheet with class participation. Students will finish the worksheet at that time if needed.
I did take note on a particular student who had difficulty focusing when the teacher was going over the questions, what they did was moved themselves from the distracting situation and set themselves to a more effective learning environment (they moved from the busy table to the quiet carpet). I thought that was amazing that they recognized that where they were, wasn’t going to work for them and took initiative over their learning environment.
Morning Message and Schedule Review
After the morning worksheet/soft start students gather at the class carpet where the special helper will review the morning message, they will pick friends to help find and correct mistakes. The special helper is also responsible for changing the calendar and school day count. Students enjoy this responsibility.
After the calendar is completed the student helper will join the rest of the class at the carpet. At this time the teacher will review the daily schedule with the students. The teacher is open to any questions or comments that are related to the schedule. I did take note that many students do ask questions to clarify any unexpected events in the schedule.
What’s Up Next
Through our visits to this amazing class there has been a variety of tasks students are working on. On assignment that they are currently working on is that students are shown an image and they are to create a story out of the image. The image this crew was given was a playground with students playing on the equipment. When I was in this class observing they were to create an oral story from the image. Then next time the student work on this they would be retelling their story and writing it down. This particular assignment would take multiple classes for students to complete, so we observed a small portion. I really liked it and though creating through imagery would be fun for students.
Another task…
Students are also working on perfecting their printing skills by completing pages in a printing book. Some of the students mentioned that this example the letters are smaller than their last printing book. The teacher mentioned it is the next phase of practice for students. What I noticed is the teacher gave detailed instruction to how to complete the focused letter and gave detailed expectations of completion for students. This way students know what to do and how to do it!
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