Cassie's Observation In The Classroom

When I began working with Cassie, at first my mentor teacher struggled with an academic goal to give her. I asked him if he could look through her grades and find something she consistently struggled with. Upon looking at her grades, we decided that filling in the key terms on graphic organizers and finding the main point in reading was where she struggled most. Within the evidence I gathered, this becomes clear. In November, while filling out a graphic organizer, Cassie only copied down the definitions that were given to her by the teacher. She didn’t even attempt to write the definitions in her own words in the column beside it. More than that, even within the definitions she only copied, some of them are still incomplete, as if she was

During my second out of class observation, I noticed Cassie spending time at lunch with another student, studying and helping her with homework. I later saw them together in Mr. Bearak’s class, where Cassie was tutoring this newcomer EL student who had just joined Mr. Bearak’s classroom. Students who tutor others have been shown to gain confidence in their own abilities, according to a study described in Children Teaching for Learning: What happens when children teach others in the classroom. “Then analysis found clear benefits in terms of tutor achievement, as 33 of 38 studies found a significant effect” (p. 2). Cassie’s kindhearted nature led her to begin tutoring another student, without realizing the benefits that will come for her as well. For a next step, encouraging her to continue tutoring, and giving them plenty of independent work time in the classroom will help encourage this positive new

More than that, if wait time seems to be ineffective, I should never be afraid to increase the wait time in my classroom. Inevitably there are students who will produce answers more quickly than other students in your classroom, but as a teacher you need to attempt to reach all of your students. Increasing wait time produces a higher quality of answers, and provides enough time for EL and IEP students to formulate their own answers without relying on their