The following were the notes I took from our visit on 4/30 to Sue Kempton's classroom. I have not organized or checked them for mistakes or even if they make sense. They were line of thought things that hit me while visiting. I am still digesting.
- Keep AM in tact. No specials in morning.
- Book check out is daily homework. This means parent or other person reading to child not the child reading.
- Nonfiction is really important.
- Inference is huge right now. 2 year olds can infer. Use word clues and picture clues.
- Don't pick the book apart the first time you read it.
- Song and movement throughout the day.
- No chairs.
- Workshop model - Mini lesson, guided instruction, independent work.
- Pay attention to questioning.
- Hugs and talks individually to every child as they enter the classroom.
- Who's absent chart.
- Book check out
- Math board- twelve is the answer. What is the story (inferring)
- A lot of choice to start with free exploration
- Shape cards hung from ceiling
- IA helping student with sight words on the go.
- Beautiful bird art work displayed. All displayed work is art – no writing or other curricular work displayed.
- Transitioned to all students reading independently, with partners, and with teacher
- Lights off signal to get quiet
- Teacher gives directions very quietly
- Whole nonfiction shelf animal theme
- No staff name badges
- No visitors badges required
- Turns off lights to transition.
- Slow transitions
- Each child gently urged to join transition
- Can you help him? With spelling on crown
- Does anyone have anything to share?
- Shared stuff they discovered in the books they read.
- Asked inferring questions
- Pointed out vocabulary
- A lot of white noise competing
- Connect to previous learning
- Bunny roams around freely
- None of the kids raise their hands during some discussion times – they are allowed to popcorn out with their responses
- “Rich” words
- Connected learning to previous learning again.
- Say it in a loud voice because I know you know this. -empowering
- I want you to look at these pictures because I am going to ask some of you to do this.
- No teacher desk
- I want you to do some thinking about why poachers would want to kill a cheetah.
- What do they want from the cheetah?
- Kids identify kids who are absent
- Not full participation when given direction
- 9:00 How do we know it is Thursday
- Because it starts with th
- I am glad you said th and not just t because that would be tursday
- Picture of twin towers displayed and labeled
- Morning message-
- I want to see the first part of the year – how dis these kindergarteners get to this point?
- Discipline handled very publicly sometimes.
- What clues did you see that said we are having cupcakes and juice today?
- 9:25 first movement break - song played on CD player
- Finished with a sit down movement song
- I have a new book to read to you.
- Pay attention to the word and picture clues
- The author does not tell you who Charlie Anderson is and how they got her name. Can you infer who Charlie Anderson is before we start reading?
- Stopped top discuss and practice purring
- 9:40 shared student writing from yesterday
- Would you refocus please - student left to tape spot - raise your hand when you are ready to come back
- Go ahead and get your writing
- Reread your piece first.
- Plays music softly during writing
- What do you want the reader to infer from your writing?
- IA stayed at back table the whole time – Sue roamed around other tables
- Does not focus on case, buy does work on punctuation and spacing but mostly on content.
- Reread your writing and listen for your stops
- You're going to show with your words that you are going to have fun but you are not going to come right out and say that
- Always starts with - will you read your writing to me?
- Can you infer how he is feeling- during I message?
- Back table with IA needed more help with sound spelling
- 10:20 We need to stop now.
- I am going to have Jade share.
- Sue is OK with transitions taking longer and urging them over quietly and individually.
- What can you infer from her writing
- Nursery rhymes are very important
- Public handling of disagreements builds confidence to speak up for themselves.
- Her and here - what do you notice about the difference between these words.
- Rearranged the words and asked what letter is missing.
- MCSD teachers tell me we need more books - lots more nonfiction.
- Use inference to decide words at word level not just concept level.
- Uses metacognitive vocab with students- even major units of study (schema, inference, visualizing, questioning
- Did break into leveled groups
- Sight word work, partner reading or independent reading with others
- Sue individually conferences with students reading like writing.
- Independent readers were very actively engaged.
- Used song to transition from reading to lunch.
- Many song books read independently and shared.
- 12:30 shared read from song book
- Mathematicians job is to answer shared math problem
- Math consists of building numbers in all the ways they can. Starts with the hand game. All about number sense/ concept. She calls it numeration?
- A lot of independent work is done worth teacher doing lots of conferencing in all curricula.
- I have not seen any of the students do the I messages on their own.
- Workshop process is the same for all subjects (reading, writing, math)
- Not much in the way of labeling evident in the classroom
Questions that I had (many were answered later in our conversation):- What would be most effective - 2 IAs in the morning or 1 all day?
- Where is the word wall?
- Where is the alphabet chart?
- Do you have other book tubs not out?
- Respect and caring only character/ rules displayed?
- What is the purpose of the tape on the floor?- I want to learn more about "refocusing"
- Did any of your kids start with no English?- they all seem quite fluent now
- What is the reasoning behind no erasers?
- What did the boy do to get his word cards picked out?
- Do you do leveled groups for lit block?
- What resources do you recommend in terms of helping us with inferring? (List of books, philosophy, lesson plans/ing)
- Do you get a classroom budget (how much)? How do you spend it?
- No nap time- do you do nap time earlier in the year?
- Is it this way all year? How do you get them to this point?
Question Sue asked us:- What will you do away with?
