Week Five at Cornerstone
March 6, 2008
Finally, a full week of field! On Monday we had the final competition for the kids flying and rolling devices. They had a lot of fun competing with one another. After that, Ms. Dillion read to the class for about fifteen minutes from a chapter book. I like the idea of teachers reading a higher level book to the class. By reading to them, you set an example for how they should read and also write. I had to opportunity to observe the third reading group for the first time on Monday. This is the group who are still functioning below grade level. The activities they did focused mostly on the sounds letters and letter combinations make.
On Tuesday the class did Ohio standardized test preparation. They have workbooks for both math and reading. They filled out the questions in the books and then graded each others work. Ms. Dillion talked the students through the logic of finding the “best answer.” It was made obvious to the students that what they were doing was in preparation for a final test, not to benefit their education. Although I understand the reasoning behind this preparation, it seems absurd to devote so much time to teaching to the test. It seems like a comprehensive education should be enough to prove what the students know.
On Wednesday I was able to spend more time with the third reading group. There was little discipline within the group. In some cases, students blatantly disrespected the teacher and each other with on consequences. Below are some conversations I wrote down, verbatim:
Student: “You have to wait until everyone’s ready!”
Teacher: “I don’t have to do anything.”
Student: “Then I don’t have to do it, I’ll take my time.”
The student then did proceed to move extremely slowly. When the rest of the group was on number three, she asked for the teacher to repeat number one, and she did, without hesitation. This only reinforced the disrespectful behavior of the student.
Teacher: “You guys fight like you’re sisters, are you sisters?”
Student 1: ” I don’t want her to be my sister!”
Student 2: “I don’t like her!”
I can’t understand why the teacher chooses to never reprimand her students. In addition to being inappropriate for the classroom environment, it impedes the learning experience.
Thursday was writer’s notebook day again. They read a book called “Nicholas Bentley Stoningpot III” and wrote responses to it in their journals. Again, I think this is a really great activity for creative writing.
Even though I won’t be in class for the next three weeks, I’m looking forward to my next time at Cornerstone.
March 17, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Those situations and comments are very interesting. It almost seems that some of the teachers comments and actions are unprofessional and quite unnecessary. I would become quite frustrated in that situations.
I would also agree with you that WAY too much time is devoted to teaching to the Ohio standard tests but unfortunatly that is the time we are living in and tests are key and can schools have the most successful passage rate when they do this teaching to the tests. I really dislike this fact and find it difficult to understand how people believe that one test will be able to tell you how every single student is doing. There is never one single way that can tell how all students are doing. Every student is different in the way they learn as well as how they take tests.