❤ Valuing Bilingualism 



Although everyone in the class can speak English, my teacher will occasionally count down to quiet the kids in Spanish. I love that she does this because you can see some of the kids attention completely switch to her, like a switch went off in their brains. 

There is only one true ELL student in my class, and she doesn't write the best in English yet. So my teacher will explain to her what the word means and compare it to something similar in Spanish even though my teacher's L1 is English. I think this is something amazing my teacher does because she isn't just saying "no this is wrong go back and fix it or go ask a classmate" she truly works with her (definitely something I'll take away with me).

Other than the occasional counting down, there isn't much other incorporation of other languages. However, I wouldn't say that she doesn't value L1+L2 because sometimes when the some of the students whisper to one another in a different language, which is usually Spanish, she doesn't tell them to only speak in English. 

Something my teacher does an amazing job at, is drawing to the students experiences and relating to things they've gone through or enjoy. For example, anonymous student really loves football, but isn't the greatest at math. My teacher will explain to him that if he wants to play football one day, then he's going to need to pass math and and all starts with not giving up and paying attention - both are two things needed in football as well. Also, when it comes to serious situations, she speaks to the children like people, not kids. Anonymous student came up to my teacher and was delighted that her father was going to be out of jail in two short years. My teacher hugged her and told her how proud of her, her father was going to be. My teacher and her students share a special bond because she's created a home-feel to her classroom that allows for honesty, openness, and for the students to be who they are. If they don't understand something, she goes down to their level to help them understand. 

I hope when I have a classroom of my own I can create the environment she has in her classroom. It's incredible!

When it comes to parent involvement, my teacher strays away from saying "mom and dad" and usually just says something like "whoever takes care of you" or something in that nature. This is because the majority of the students are lacking either one or both parents. One of the students actually got dropped off at his older sisters house and the mom never came back for him... 

She has found out a lot about each of the students home life which also helps with how she interacts with the parents. 

For example, when it comes to anonymous student, she knows the mother is here illegally and can't read the send home notes and so my teacher google translates all of it and sends a special note home. Also, another student doesn't have parents so when she is misbehaving, instead of saying "I'm calling mom" she will refer to grandma - her care taker.

When the students are misbehaving to a certain extent, the parents are notified. Also, the field trip information, etc. is all sent home with the students to share with the parents/care takers. 

Physical Environment

❤ Physical Space

Desks and Seating Arrangements: 

Since this is an abnormally large class size in classroom where that many desks clearly shouldn't have to fit, I think my teacher did a good job of not only arranging the desks so that all of the students can see and participate in instruction but also to where the seating makes it easy for partnering up and interacting with one another.  Everyone is facing the front of the class or to where they can clearly see the teacher and the board, this is because since the class size is so large, they easily get distracted by one another and its easier for her to see who is not paying attention and who is.

Something unique to her classroom desk setup was that her desk also was the main focal point so that she had all eyes on what everyone was doing. I don't know if I necessarily like this... although its structured and easy for the teacher, I feel like the students don't get to interact with one another as much - and in a class with English language learners specifically, student interaction and communication contributes to advancements in their language skills. 

Materials and Supplies:

Every student has a pencil case with highlighters, pencils, markers, colored pencils, and glue sticks inside and is easy accessible and available to them whenever they need it. However, they never go home with the students, so this is a class set. Each of the students also have "data binders" which contain all of the their graded assignments. The teacher uses these religiously because sometimes she doesn't input a grade or something happens to where it looks like the student didn't do it, and the data binders are used as a double check method, while also teaching the students organization. The students also have college ruled notebooks, and work books. As you can see in the inside view of this desk, the teacher likes the students to keep their desks neat and tidy and backpacks always remain on the backs of their chairs. "If you can't even keep your desk clean, how do you expect to get through college," she tells the students. I'm not quite sure if the teacher supplied each student with these materials or not but she does keep extras of everything in case students don't have something. In a title one school I think helping supply students with some materials requested by teachers could help strengthen the relationship not just with the student and the teacher, but the teacher and the parents.

They also have "green books" which are there practice standardized testing booklets which are placed in the back of the room and every student knows which is theirs, just like the lenovo computers which are locked right next to the green books. Everything is always in the same place so that the students always know where they are and grabbing the materials don't take too much time away from their lessons. 

Walls and Decor:

My teacher has the walls fully decorated. Although everything is written in English, she has a huge section of a wall dedicated completely to other countries. I think a cool addition to this would be to tie in "hello" in all of the different languages, or something the students could easily translate and use. She has the schools norms on the walls, inspiration posters, what to and to not do, things to follow, goals, college posters, and even artwork given to her by the students. 

A lot of her students like to draw an whenever they have finished a drawing that they feel great about, she pins it up on her wall to "show everyone their ability and achievement." Most teachers hate when their students draw but in this class's case, drawing is how they learn sometimes and it also is how the escape what terrible things they go home to everyday. 

Norms - procedures, and routines: 

This class functions because of the norms my teacher has made and without them, it would be utter chaos.

•  "I hear voices" signifies she hears who is talking and that it isn't time for that... pretty much their first warning. 
• "Voices at zero" is something she says when someone is about to present or when she has something to explain to the class.
• Hands raised mean different things:
• fingers crossed = bathroom, which they then take a buddy with 
• "standards" are paragraphs students have to write over the weekend if they were misbehaving in class after 3 warnings.
• After lunch the students come in and the lights are off and they lay their heads down on their desks for 5 minutes with calming music playing in the background so they can calm down and let their minds switch over (the picture above is what she displays for them during this time) 

Something I love about her classroom is it truly is student ran, and that is part of the class routine. She gives the students a lot of responsibility. There's a door opener, graders, standard writer, fun Friday tally writer, bathroom buddy, line leader, timer, lights person, etc. It builds a certain decorum in the classroom and instead of the students fighting over who gets to do what, they all know their roles. 

I'm not quite sure if this is counts as procedures or routines, but it definitely is a classroom norm. My teacher refers a lot to real world scenarios and whenever the children are off tasks or not completing the assignments up to par, then she will bring up things going on in the world. For example, the procedure for when you first come into class is to sit down and get out the needed materials and then put your backpacks on your chairs. One day there were backpacks all over the floor and she stopped the class and said that if there was a school shooting and the students needed to get out of the room quickly, the backpacks would become road blocks and trip students, making it harder for an escape. At first I thought that was a little too serious for a 5th grade class, but she's right and it's something I'll remember to incorporate in my high school class.

Class Demographics

❤  Class Introduction...

I am service learning for the most amazing 5th grade classroom! When I first walked into through the door, the first thing that struck my attention was the huge class size... 32 students to be exact. Of the 32 students, 18 are boys and 14 of them are girls. Something quite different for me because in basically every class I have ever been in, the majority of students are female. Also, once I crossed the threshold, I instantly noticed that every single student had wide smiles and beaming eyes looking directly at me; I immediately felt welcomed. Regardless of the large numbers and excitement due to me being a new addition to the class, the students remained composed and calm. Four students were picked by their teacher to give me what they call a "warm welcome." They shook my hand, giggled because my hands were so little and some of them were even my height, and then asked me how my day was, about college, and

myself. They then ended our little mini conversation by saying "Thank you so much for talking with me, I hope you have a great rest of your day and enjoy being at our school" - super professional for a 5th grader if you ask me. 

All of this was within the first 10 minutes of me being there and after I was settled the students got right back to paying attention to what their teacher was saying. At this point, I knew she had worked hard to set the norm that when she's speaking, all eyes and ears are on her. Also, I knew that the students and teacher shared a great relationship because they all were so engaged and she was talking about math, which isn't the most exciting thing to listen as a kid.

Class Profile:

• 18 boys vs 14 girls.... 32 total students
• 1 ELL student
• 5 students who speak two or more languages
• 6 academically at risk students
• 10 trauma students

It actually took me a few visits to gather this information from the teacher because I think she really wanted to see if I was going to really become a teacher and actually cared about her students, or if I was just doing for class credit. Honestly, I loved this. It showed she really had her students best interest at heart and she really cared for them.