Teacher Interview Mrs. Whitley 10/22/2013 I got a chance to work with a fantastic teacher Mrs. Whitley.

We sat down and I asked her a few questions about her classroom and teaching style. I asked Mrs. Whitley how she usually plans her lesson, she explained that for the core subjects she coordinates with the other fifth grade teachers and they come up with lessons as a group. They are allowed of course to change ideas but for the most part the students are doing the same activities. I asked Mrs. Whitley about any special needs children in her class and how she accommodates them. She explained that one of her students has dyslexia and that most of her reading and some of her math work has been modified by an outside group, to color code certain letters that she has a difficult time with as well as the numbers 2 and 5 that she often will read backwards. I asked Mrs. Whitley about, how often science and social studies were taught in her classroom. Social studies they try and work into the week at least twice to three times. They were currently working on the thirteen colonies and they would most likely spend a week on that topic and then be moving on the American Revolution. Science is taught by an outside teacher who floats around to the different grades and she does experiments and introduces vocabulary to them. This happens once a week, but to help the students prepare for the science part of the EOGs they do a vocabulary book twice a week that they work on different words that will be appearing on the test. Reading was a large part of the class every day. The students worked on reading every morning independently, they would also be asked to do a reading conference with their teacher. They had goals to meet every morning, based on character development, setting, plot, compare contrast two characters.

There wasnt many times during my two weeks at the Community School in Davidson that I saw behavior problems. The reason for this was that Mrs. Whitley built the idea of community in her classroom. The students looped with her from fourth grade so she was able to have the students for two years and they built this trust with her and the other students in class. By having this strong community in her class Mrs. Whitley was able to make groups without worry, have students share ideas, and at the end of every day she did a skill building activity called a Standing-O. Each day a different students was picked and at the end of the day each students in the class would say three words that they believe described the person the best. The students receive the words of praise, said Thank you and the students name. This recognition helped strengthen the community in the class.