Week 3 Observation Reflection

When I reflect on my observation, I think about all of the different types of interactions that I witnessed between mainstream teachers, aides, resource room teachers, and students.
This past week I observed the first grade reading teacher because my cooperating teacher had a meeting to attend and would not be meeting with students. I accompanied this teacher to a first grade mainstream classroom where she presented a lesson on how to use a SCE (Setting, Character, Events) chart. It was interesting to see the way she interacted with the students and it seemed like what she was presenting had already been covered by the classroom teachers as there was signage on the wall with the information about SCE on it, and the students seemed fairly knowledgeable about the structure, but seemed to benefit from the practice that the lesson gave them about identifying the main characters, describing the setting and events in a way that is succinct, accurate and informative.
Next, it was back to the resource room where I saw some guided reading/stop and discuss/retell going on, and some informal assessment during that lesson. The Reading dept. was piloting a new piece of software that could test and report on 41 different literacy domains, so there was a bit of discussion amongst the teachers and aides about the capabilities, pros/cons of using the technology for these purposes as well as observing how students were able to navigate and operate within the program. I like the environment of this school, and I feel that the reading department is competent and has clearcut procedures and processes in addition to a firm grasp on the materials provided by the publisher that they use.