Literacy and Learning in Early Childhood Education

Classroom Observation

By

Samah salem

Literacy and Learning in Early Childhood Education EDUC 5735 

 Dr. Robin Bright

Knowledge is not something that can be simply given to the learners; rather, that it is constructed by the learners themselves through activities that prepared carefully by the teacher (Piget, 1977). One of the most visible features of the constructivist classroom is the democratic environment as it is very much inviting and prepared to serve students’ needs. 

During my observation of a classroom at the Montessori school, I noticed that students are highly self-discipline; they are ready to interact, play and work with each others. Most of the time students work in pairs or in small groups, it is impressive how they do that naturally without referring to the teacher. This is a contemporary application of Vygotsky’s theory, which encourages collaborative learning, activities are interactive and in a student-centered system.  Activities in the classroom are prepared carefully to enhance students’ development and  enrich their knowledge. The teacher always makes sure that a first-grade student is combined with a second-grade one, so they can support and learn from each other’s experience. This also would help less advanced students to perform within their zone of proximal development (Leong, 1998). Each student has a checklist of weekly goals that they are expected to achieve by the end of the week. Examples of the goals: “I will do language wipe off sheet reading booklet” or “I will work on Raz-kids.com”. By keeping this checklist on their desks, students would keep track of their goals. Having students set their goals and follow a weekly plan would help them to be organized, on track; moreover, it would help them to take ownership of their learning.

The constructive theory regards students as investigators, who construct their knowledge through experiencing natural materials; they need to see, feel and hear in order to understand and build their knowledge. In the classroom, natural materials are scattered in centers, even in the reading center, where students match realia or real objects with the matching word card. There was snakes’ skin, stones, a beehive, animal skeleton, bird wings, a turtle shell, a bird nest, scales, and many other natural things that invite students to think, investigate, and explore. The teacher tries to appeal all five senses during the activities; as an example, she has many bells in her classroom, with each bell has a different sound. The teacher rings a certain bell whenever she wants to draw students’ attention to follow a certain command.

Classroom materials, work sheets, educational games are prepared to facilitate and maximize independent learning and exploration. Each student has a folder labeled with her/ his name and this folder is full with activities and work sheets that meet their literacy level. Students are free to choose and work on activities at their own pace. The teacher makes sure that the activities range from easy to difficult and while ensuring that the work sheets are at the student’s literacy level. For example, in the literacy centers there are activities that sound/letter corresponding and other activities that focus on breaking polysyllables word into syllables. The teacher makes sure that scaffolding provides clear directions that reduce student’s confusion to help her/him stay on task (Van der Stuyf, 2002).

The constructive theory capitalizes on student’s interest, therefore; integrating technology in the classroom is a priority of the Montessori school because it expands the scope of students’ knowledge. In addition, it can assist teachers in developing a more individualized approach of instructions to meet the diverse range of students’ needs and allow students to work in their individual pace. Students get to use the school computer lap as well as the class computer station. Students can practice typing, do math exercises, paint and draw; however; they focus mainly on programs that support phonological awareness and reading developments such as starfall.com, pbskids.org, raz-kids.com, pbskids.org.

Books of all sorts are available in the classroom library to encourage interest and exploration during students’ aesthetic reading time. Book choices are varied; there are fiction and non-fiction books; there are simple science, geography, history, and space theme books. Books are arranged according to their levels, while the teacher has a set of short story combined with literacy activities for each grade level.

In the constructivist classroom students are read to and they read to each other, it is common to see three students taking turns to read one story. Book buddy is another approach to motivate students to read. Each student is paired with another fifth grade student where they spend around twenty minutes reading and discussing a book. Both upper graders and younger students enjoy the learning partnership involved in reading buddy time. The reading buddy will increase the upper graders’ self-esteem and it is a good opportunity for them to practice their oral reading skills. Another approach to improve students’ literacy is by giving students the chance to check out books from the bookmobile and the school library once a week. Anther great idea that really inspired me is that students get to go to the senior homes across the street to share their favorite stories with the elderly once a month for thirty minutes, this will alleviate their self confident as readers.

Story time is an important, relaxing and entertaining time for aesthetic reading, where students watch the teacher reads fluently with expression. The teacher helps students refine their abilities and apply comprehension strategies. During my observation, the teacher invited the students to the carpet and read a story called “Groundhog and his Shadow”. The teacher started by asking students: “What is so special about today?” then she stated: “It is Groundhog Day”. By doing this, the teacher invited her students to activate their prior knowledge and think about the theme of the book. The teacher stopped on key points and asked the students to predict and justify the story events by using think –aloud procedure to keep students engaged.  The teacher asked students what they would do if they were in the same situation, to help them in making a connection with the story characters and the events. At the end, the teacher summarized the main events and then she encouraged students to ask questions and reflect on the story. After finishing reading the story, the teacher showed her students a collection of stories related to the Groundhog Day theme. What is unique about this,  is that the teacher showed these books only when it is Groundhog Day; that made students enthused and motivated to explore this theme.

After choosing reading books, students gathered in groups and started reading. During story time, students take advantage of interactive reading time to strengthen their ability to read aloud while the teacher makes sure that the groups are mixed of first and second grade students and all students are actively involved in reading and listening. When students read in small groups, they help each others to decode unfamiliar word, they also explore strategies that their classmates are using to figure out unfamiliar words. The teacher kept moving around the students watching and listening to them; sometimes she asked questions to elaborate and enrich their thinking.

Phonics and word identification tasks in Montessori schools are acquired naturally through reading phonogram books, playing with phonics games and by working on the worksheets that focus on one task at a time. Many phonemic awareness display charts are scattered on the wall, which is designed to organize the key information, initial blend, long vowels, digraphs to help student discriminate between the phonemes, pronunciation, and the spelling pattern. Students refer to these charts to spell words and they use them for other phonics activities (Tompkins, 2010).

Since constructivist teaching fosters critical thinking, the teacher takes advantage of centre time to test students’ knowledge and enhance their critical thinking through discussion. Every day the teacher assigns two students to write the morning message on a small chalkboard before the carpet time and they have a chance to read the message during the carpet time.. This is a good opportunity to show that the teacher has confidence in them and away to enrich students’ development. During carpet time; a first-grader and second -grader lead the quiz master session. This would be a good opportunity for students to practice their oral language skills and practice asking questions. For example, a student asked:  “Fix the spelling of peeple” or “change the word of may to make it means sweet potato” or “how many legs for 3 chairs”.

Students are given different opportunities to express themselves and communicate with other students as they write stories, journals, letters, and cards to each others. When they write their own thoughts, they come to the understanding that they can say what they think, write what they say, and read what they write. The difficulty of vocabulary and grammar is determined by the students own use of language (.Halliday, 1999). This would help students to develop their concept about written language and eventually would make them more confident and skillful. The writing center is designed to be a comfortable place for students who work in groups; they discuss their ideas and participate in the writing process. All the materials that students might need during writing time are laid on the writing center shelves: lined papers, blank and colored papers, sentence strips, sharpeners, erasers, pencils and crayons all are available to fit different writing purposes. The teacher tried to involve her students in authentic literacy activates so she asked her students to write Valentine’s Day cards every day from the beginning of the month until Valentine’s Day. Students write descriptive sentences to their classmates and they read them to each other after the first break. This help students maintain a good relationship with their classmates and increase their descriptive vocabulary as well as develop their writing skills.

One of the important displays that caught my attention is the word wall chart. It is well-organized visual reference that is used to organize and summarize key information. It is easily accessible because it is hung on the writing center wall to promote independency in reading and writing activities. Students do not need to refer to the teacher to ask about word’s spelling. By visually displaying this information on classroom walls, students have ready access to key concepts on a need-to-know basis. Students work was displayed in the room, this part is an ongoing display the teacher change it continuously, having students’ work displayed in the classroom would give them a boost and will push them toward excellence.

The second graders were pulled out for a guided writing session. The teacher had a big stuffy penguin on the table, when students entered the room, she let them come close to the table and examine the penguin. She started her class by reading a short story about penguins. Students had the chance in a previous class to brainstorm sensory words and categorized them in five charts: sight word, hearing word, smell words, touch words and taste words. Students were asked to write sentences describing the penguin using descriptive words from the list. The teacher’s role in the classroom is a facilitator; during the writing session, she monitored students’ progress and encouraged them to use proper space between the words. The teacher drew students’ attention to the punctuation marks. When a student struggled in spelling, teacher encouraged him to use his best judgment and invent the spelling she asked him  to segment the word and sound it out to figure out the corresponding sound that represents each letter. She also reminded students with the vowel rules, such as, when two vowels come together the first one does the talking and the second on does the walking. This practice would allow students to construct their knowledge about letter and sound corresponding and apply this knowledge in their writing. Most students are between the Within-word pattern stage and the syllables and affixes stage. Students are empowered by their teacher, she keep praising her students to motivate them and help them be more confidents and proud of what they are writing, she would say “I like how you use upper case when you start your sentence” or “I like how you stretch your sentence out”.

I enjoyed the opportunity seeing the theory in practice, watching children learning reading and writing in a constructivist classroom. In this classroom, I observed creating an environment that produces meaningful learning experience for the students that let students effectively engaged with the learning process.

References:

E.Tompkins, G. (2010). Literacy in the Early Grades.

Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (1999). Construing experience through meaning: a language-based approach to cognition: Cassell London.

Piaget, J. (1977). The development of thought: Equilibration of cognitive structures.(Trans A. Rosin).

Rosenblatt, L. (1978). The Reader, the Text, the Poem (Carbondale. Southern Illinois University. Van Der Stuyf, R. R. (2002). Scaffolding as a teaching strategy. Retrieved December, 31, 2003.

Classroom meetings.

Piaget, J. (1977). The development of thought: equilibration of cognitive structures.(Trans A. Rosin). Oxford, England: Viking. (1977). viii 213 pp.

Van Der Stuyf, R. R. (2002). Scaffolding as a Teaching Strategy. Retrieved from: http://www.sandi.net/cms/lib/CA01001235/Centricity/Domain/101/RTI/Scaffolding%20as%20a%20Teaching%20Strategy.pdf