For my class titled Teaching Primary Literacy, I had the incredible opportunity to do a field experience in a 2nd grade classroom at Slippery Rock Elementary School in Slippery Rock, PA. My cooperating teacher was a fantastic teacher and I loved being able to learn from her! I spent 7 weeks in this classroom where we focused on comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency. In those 7 weeks, I had the opportunity to teach a full lesson and then co-teach two more. The other weeks, I was in charge of a center during ELA center time.
The lesson I taught was about the book The Spider and the Honey Tree. The students were learning what a fable was, and this was an excellent, grade appropriate example. The premise of the story was a girl was gathering food and she took her friend, Spider, along with her. The spider was sneaky and greedy and would take all the food that the girl showed him. He ended up getting stuck in a honey tree and the girl didn't help him get out. The moral of the story was that we shouldn't be greedy and we should be kind to our friends. I had the students work on suffixes throughout the book. After reading it once, we re-read it and looked for words with suffixes and discussed how it changed the word. We also talked about what a fable was and how it taught a story.
I was super impressed with the skill level of the students in this 2nd grade classroom. For half of my field experience, I was there during multi-tiered systems support (MTSS) and during that time was when I taught my lesson. The students that I had were all above grade level which made it more challenging for me, in a positive way. I was able to see how I could altar typical 2nd grade lessons and make them more difficult while also maintaining the standards that aligned with the grade.
For the other half, I was there during ELA stations. Typically, I would run a station where they completed a worksheet and then played a spelling game called "Oops!" In this game, students picked a card out of a bag and I read it to them. They tried to spell it to the best of their ability and if they got it right, they kept the card. If they drew an "Oops!" card, they had to return all their cards to the bag. The students really enjoyed this game and I could see how hard they were trying to spell correctly. The students that I had for this time was different than the students for MTSS time. These were the homeroom students, so it wasn't tiered. I had a range of students from low to high. They were grouped somewhat to their abilities, but there was still a mixture. This was also a challenge to change how I did the worksheet and the game depending on the group that was at my table.
How does this field fit under component 3C? Engaging students is important in all lessons, but especially in reading. I had to make sure all students were participating and comprehending what we were reading. Typically, it was a full group setting so I was managing almost 20 students. The students were luckily all interested in reading, so I didn't have too hard of a time. But in order to make sure they were engaged, we used popcorn reading, choral group readings, and smaller group readings to make sure all students were engaged and participating. For stations, the students were more engaged in my station just because we had a fun game that they were learning from. Utilizing games is a great way to engage students of all ages, but especially in the younger grades. They're learning without realizing it's happening!
What parts of this domain tie in with this field? All components of the domain fit into the field experience. The components are activities/assignments, grouping of students, instructional materials/resources, and structure/pacing. The activities/assignments included all that we did during MTSS and ELA stations. The grouping of students was interesting because it changed throughout the day and throughout my experience. The students were grouped by ability throughout all of 2nd grade for MTSS, and the specific classroom I was in was grouped by ability for ELA stations. The grouping was definitely beneficial for both students and teachers to best serve all students. The instructional materials/resources were all engaging, especially the games we played. The students enjoyed all the stories we read and the activities we did with them. My cooperating teacher and I changed the pacing of what we were doing depending on how the students were responding to it. If they seemed to be struggling, we slowed it down. If it was too easy, we sped it up and added more difficulty.