During my level III experience I observed many great classroom procedures in which I

am going to be sharing in this paper. Throughout this experience, I observed many of these

procedures throughout each day. I learned that having implementing procedures from day one is

important as it sets expectations for the whole year for the students. By this time of the year

students know what to expect if there is misbehavior, or are not following these procedures if the

teacher has asked them to.

Having a well thoughtful introduction is important as it sets the stage for the whole

lesson. One of the introductions Mrs. Johnson uses in her Jr Kindergarten class is making sure

her students bodies are ready to learn. She will simply tell the students to make sure their body is

ready to learn today. If there is a student that is fidgeting or is not paying attention she will ask

them to take a break at their seat. This is a great introduction as it helps students realize if they

are ready to learn or if they need to take time to think about what it means to be ready. Another

introduction I observed in this experience is when my teacher shares the objective of that lesson.

Before teaching she will simply tell the students what they will be learning throughout the

lesson. In Jr. Kindergarten, there is a lot of times the teacher reads aloud to the students. She will

introduce the book, but also will introduce before the book the objective. One of the days the

class was talking about differences between people. Mrs. Johnson started out by asking students

if it was okay if people were different. They then read a book about how someone was different

and explaining that it is okay.

In this experience I observed lessons that were planned out thoroughly and were easy to

follow. Each day the lessons were for the most part the same format. In math the teacher starts

the lesson by having an interactive activity on the promethean board for the students to

participate in. This would allow for each of the students to have a chance to come up to the board
and do a problem or two. After the activity, the teacher would instruct or elaborate more on the

activity on the board. Next the teacher would have the students work on an activity at their desk

in which the students would have practice on the skill of the day or week. She would use this as

an assessment to see how well the students were doing on that skill. One activity she had the

students do was write their own addition and subtraction problems. She would assess the

students to see if they knew the difference between the addition and subtraction signs. Another

lesson development I observed was when the two Jr Kindergarten teachers did their planning

together. This day they were planning the next two weeks of school. Both teachers had ideas and

they would elaborate on each- other thoughts. They were planning a reading unit on fishes and

birds. This planning session gave me an idea of what it might look like when I am planning for

my own classroom.

Throughout this experience, I learned that closures are vitally important as it is a time for

teachers to reflect on the lesson and to see how much the students have learned throughout the

lesson. My teacher always related back to the beginning of the lesson. The day the students were

talking about differences the teacher had the students come to the carpet and make a circle. She

had the students go around in the circle and say one thing they liked about themselves. The

students all had different answers and she explained that we are all different and it is okay that

we are. She also had the students tell one of their classmates one thing they liked about them.

This was a way to show students appreciation for their classmates. Another concept closure I

observed in the classroom was during science when the class was learning about the different

food groups. During this particular unit the students were making plates that had pictures from

the grocery store ad. The lesson began by the teacher reading a book about that specific food

group. After they did their project she would close the lesson by asking the students one thing
that is in the food group of that day. She gave examples of different foods and would ask the

student why certain types did not fit in that group. The students would be able to explain that

those certain foods did not belong in those groups. At the end she related the book back in by

reminding the students of the food group they were talking about that day. She also asked the

students if certain foods were in that particular food group.

One type of assessment I observed in this experience is thumbs up. Throughout the lesson

my teacher would often ask my students if they understood what she was talking about. If there

were students that did not put their thumbs up that either meant they were not paying attention or

they simply did not understand that concept. She would not ask the students who didnt have

their thumbs up in front of the other students. She would find another time one on one to talk

with them. This type of assessment is simple and works with any grade level as a fast way to find

out if students understood the material. Another assessment I observed was the letter books the

students worked on each week. In Jr. Kindergarten, the students learn a letter a week. On the

second day of the week the students would have a book that has pictures that started with that

letter. They would also circle that letter each time it appeared on the following page. This

assessment helped the teacher understand if the students knew the letter of the week. She would

ask the students why they didnt circle the picture that started with a different letter. This

assessment is done weekly until the class is done learning each of the letters. The students would

do multiple activities with the letter of the week and this assessment always was something the

students look forward to.

One instructional strategy I observed was cooperative learning. This was during guided

reading time. The teacher would work with all four groups each day. Since Jr Kindergartners are

not able to read much the story would be short and would mainly consist of their everyday
words. Before reading the book the teacher would go through the everyday words with each of

the group members. All the students knew different amounts of the everyday words. The teacher

would pull out which words would appear in the book and those would be the ones she would go

through before reading the book. If a student did not know a certain word she would put that one

back into the rest of the words and the student would have to retry again. On the fourth day of

reading the book the teacher would have each student read the book alone to her and each of the

students would be at different levels. Another instructional strategy I observed was direct

instruction. One time this strategy I observed was during math. The students were working on

addition and subtraction. The teacher had an activity where the students would write out their

own problem by picking two numbers and either a subtraction or addition sign. The teacher

modeled exactly how this activity was to be done by showing it on the promethean board. She

explained the steps and asked the students for help to finish the problem.

In the classroom that I observed in I was amazed with the resources my teacher has. The

technology available to her is a promethean board, tablets and one iPad. She uses the promethean

board throughout the day for various subjects. The most she uses the board for is during math.

Most days she will start out with an interactive math activity on the board. Each of the students

have the chance to come up to the board and practice the activity she has for that day. She has 6

classroom tablets to use as well. One app the class uses on the tablets is Seesaw. They can do

various activities on this app such as drawing, writing, or recording their voices. When I was

there the students drew a picture, and wrote both an addition and subtraction problem. They

thought of a story to go along with the problem and recorded their voices explaining their story

problem. My teacher also has one iPad in the classroom as well. I never observed her using the

iPad, but there are different apps that the students would be able to use on there that are different
from the tablets. The is a great variety of library resources in this classroom. The books are

organized by fiction/ nonfiction, ABCs/ colors, people/ places, animals, science. The students

have many choices when they have library reading time. The curriculum used in this classroom

focuses on the students learning their letters. The curriculum used is called The Letter People.

Each week the students learn a different letter. The setup of the activities each week are set up

the same. On the first , the letter is introduced and the students learn the letter song. They think

of words that start with that letter of the week. The second day the teacher introduces big book

that goes with the letter of the week. They also do some sort of an art activity with the letter. The

third day the big activity is garbage man in which the students have to decide if the garbage man

will eat the particular item. If the item starts with the letter Garbage man will eat it. They also re-

read the big book from Tuesday. On the fourth day the teacher re-reads the big book and the

students write their names on the board showing if their name has the letter of the week in it.

Each day they also sing the letter song. There is no math curriculum in this classroom, but they

use Mastering math big books that go along with each of the math concepts they learn

throughout the year. The writing curriculum my teacher uses is Handwriting Without Tears. This

curriculum breaks down writing skills in many great ways such as how to even hold your pencil

when writing. This curriculum has many ways to remember how to write letters such as little

line, big line, little line which is the way to make a Z. The curriculum has ideas like this for each

of the letters to help the students learn to write their letters. In this classroom there is a great

amount of manipulatives. The two main manipulatives my teacher uses in her classroom are

unifix cubes and ten frames. Both manipulatives are used quite often in this classroom. Unifix

cubes are used for counting, adding, subtracting or any activity dealing with numbers. She also

uses these for the ten frames as well. The ten frames are used for learning to count to ten, adding
and subtracting. One activity she does on the promethean board is ten frames. She shows a ten

frame quickly and the students have to quickly count how many dots they saw in the ten frame.

The students will show with their hands what how many are not filled in. The resources in the

classroom I was in were used at many different times during the day. I hope to have some of

these in my classroom as well.