blog post 5

In the beginning in loved the idea of having all of the children sit in a circle for the read aloud. I noticed that doing that it makes it easier for the children to do turn and talk. Something else I noticed was that the teacher had the students make predictions about what the story was going to be about based off the title and the illustration on the front cover. During the turn and talk I heard one of the little girls make a connection from the book to her personal life. It was a time when she had cut her hair. With her making that connection, it led to other students being able to make personal connections to the story. The biggest thing is, you don’t have long before a child loses focus, their attention span is very short. You start to notice the children doing a lot of moving around and laying on the ground. The kids just want to move, it is hard for them to be still. So, the biggest thing I took from that part of class is learning how to keep the children's attention, how to keep them engaged, and how to keep them focused. By the way their good morning song is cute. I really enjoyed Caroline’s story about the star she thought of in a dream I believed she said. On each of her page it said “it got smaller, and small, and smaller” ha-ha and I loved how she made the stars smaller and smaller as well. At the very end she added “it disappeared” and I like how the children has “A, B, C” charts so it helps then write out the letters and they are able to sound out the letters of big words. Another notice was during literacy, the children were getting in a bit more trouble, and was just wanting to roam around because they were finished with their booklets. Or others were excited and eager to get the teacher to hurry and read theirs. Towards the end of the observation I am assuming that the children had more of a play time period. I could be completely wrong, but I just noticed kids playing with some puzzles, then I saw others sitting down and reading a book. I think it is important for kids to have a break after a lesson, because again, you will not be able to hold their attention span for long.