Class Overview based on observations and data

Use readings from the past to describe your class of students:

Taylor & Whittaker; Bridging Multiple Worlds; Delpit; Nieto; Understanding Culture Brief; Hoeksema; Petersen & Hittie; Pearson
202 book; Woolfolk Chap 2, 3, 5; Levine
There is a lot of Hispanic culture at Cs Elementary and even in the community surrounding it. The
majority of students at the school are Hispanic. There are many small businesses surrounding the
school that are run by Hispanic people. Also, I often see many of the students walking to school
Culture
together in groups. This shows me the type of community that the students live in and how that cultural
aspect is often brought into the classroom.

Race & Ethnicity

Social SystemsPeers & Family

Moral, Spiritual, and

Faith Development

Attention & Memory

Language

Motor &
Spatial/Sequential
Ordering

Higher Order Thinking

Ability & Disability

Twenty of the twenty-three students in my classroom are Hispanic. Of those twenty, fifteen speak
Spanish in their house, and English is their second language. Of the three students left, two of them are
African American, and one is Caucasian. Many of the parents of the Hispanic students speak little to no
English.
Ms. F told me that most of the parents of her students work full time during the day. She also told me
that many of her students do not own winter coats, so they simply wear a lot of layers of shirts,
sweatshirts, and pants. This tells me that some of the families of the students in my class struggle
financially.
Cs Elementary is a public school so there arent many opportunities to talk explicitly about faith or
spirituality. Often, though, I will hear students talking about church, or they will write about church or
prayer in their responses to some of their reading. There is one boy who always says Amen, after I
get done reading a story. These small things that I observe tell me that many of the students in my
classroom come from religious families.
Only one student in my classroom has been officially diagnosed with ADHD. But there is one student
in the process of being diagnosed, and two students who show serious signs of attention deficits.
Communicating to the parents about students lack of attention is often difficult because they don t
speak English well so it is difficult for them to understand the concept. Ms. F said she has to spell it
out to the parents if she wants them to get their child tested. And often, even if she does that, they
ignore her suggestions and refuse to get their child tested.
For many of the students in my classroom, English is their second language. So far I had any problems
any of them understanding what Im saying. I think Cs Elementary does a good job of transitioning
their students from Spanish to English use in the classroom. I often hear the students speaking in
Spanish to each other. Sometimes when a student is distracted and Ms. F really wants to get a point
across, she will speak to that student in Spanish. I also work with students in small groups to improve
their fluency in reading. From my observations, it seems that students whose primary language is
English, tend to have better scores when I test them for fluency.
There are a few students in the classroom who still struggle to grip a pencil in the correct way and it
affects their handwriting. Ms. F provides those students with pencils that are fatter and have thicker led.
This helps students to have more control over their hand writing. The thicker led also keeps the tip of
the pencil from breaking as easily when the students press really hard.
Students are often asked to summarize what theyve read or are asked to pick out the difference
between fact and opinion from a given text. It seems that most of them struggle with this and really
needed assistance from either me or the teacher. These types of activities require a lot of higher order
thinking and I see most of the students struggling with that. There are other times they display a good
ability of higher order thinking. Such as when they work on their math. Many of them show great
ability to add and subtract numbers, and a few students have even moved on to multiplication, which
hasnt even been taught in second grade yet.
Because of the various races and ethnicities in the classroom, and the diverse home lives of many of the
students, there is a wide range of abilities. The reading ability of all the students ranges from a first
grade level to a fourth grade level. Because of this, students are split into reading groups according to
their level of ability, and are tutored in groups. There are no physical disabilities in the classroom.
Though there are various academic abilities among the students, each child is given a fair chance to
display his or her talents.