Blog 2

In the classroom I attend, the teacher uses buddy reading in cooperative learning. For one activity in cooperative learning, two students sort by colors, then use the data to create a graph. Another activity using cooperative learning is jelly bean tally marks. The students sorted the jelly beans by color and used tally marks to record. For technology the teacher uses www.starfall.com to differentiate reading abilities. Accelerated reader are the top readers. Kid pix uses writing and illustrating, counting and patterning activities. The teacher uses a mixture of phonics and whole language. Phonics is used for decoding and spelling and whole language is used in making predictions about stories. Also the use of illustrations to make predictions about words. Stories are used for rhyming and seasonal units have vocabulary words posted. Classroom management-activities are planned around units. Children heterogeneously grouped at tables. Seating by personalities so less chance of disruptions. Differentiate by pulling children during centers by ability groups-adapting same activities accommodate children level. An example of this is graphing. Number recognition: low-smaller amount of items to sort and high-larger amounts, the students groups the sets of items by 5's and 10's, and then adding up the columns. The most important thing about classroom management is to make sure activities are organized and structured.