Chapel Hill State School
Student Support Writing Group (small group of 6 kids):

 This was actually my favorite observation of the day.  The way this women worked with the kids was amazing.  She had such a calm and flowing manner about her, that I could have spent all day watching her work with children.

The students in this group were working on writing.  They had a one page handout they were working on.  For this handout, they had to work on various parts of writing - the most interesting activity was they had to rewrite a sentence and replace the word "said" with another word.  Each student had to share a different word that could be used in it's place.  A word like demanded, exclaimed and so on.  The way she got students to participate is what was so interesting to watch for me.

The student support system is similar to my schools with SST and IEP for students needing support for skills below or above the year/grade level.  They had not heard of 504 plans though.  The percent of students receiving supports is low.


Things I heard or saw her do:

• She helped them to know who was suppose to be speaking by saying:  "I do" meaning the teacher speaks or "we do" meaning the group can speak and share ideas with her or each other.  Several times throughout the session I would her say either "I do" or "we do" and the group would respond by either sharing ideas if she said "we do" or by listening if she said "I do".  It was really cool to watch.  I am sure a lot of pre-teaching and modeling went into this to create such a powerful group dynamic, but to see it work so fluently and effortlessly was incredible to watch.
• The teacher would say that they have a certain amount of time to do a task (i.e. one minute) and she would actually time them.  At the end, she would ask the student she noticed struggling with the task or not using their time well to ask a student or two about their ideas.  Then the teacher would ask the student for his or her idea and they always had an idea of their own after asking other kids for their ideas.  This was pretty amazing to see how just getting that student hearing some examples from other students helped them to come up with their own example.  Great concept and a great way to involve the student who might otherwise get left out or get embarrassed by not knowing the information.
• At one point in time, the teacher just asked all students to stop everything and look at her.  Once all of them were making eye contact with her, she gave them a whole group positive feedback.  I have never stopped a class completely to have all student focus on me just to praise the whole group.  It was a rewarding thing to see.  She felt good, the students felt good, I felt good and everyone participated in and appreciated the moment.

I did not get to talk to this teacher about assessment and evaluation, as I popped in after the group started and needed to leave before they ended.  However, I could see that she was always reading her kids to see who was understanding and who was not and she was finding really creative ways to support those students who needed the extra help.  She was assessing her students all the time and adjusting her instruction based on their needs throughout the whole group time.