Last week, I went to Mrs. Wensel's first grade class again on Tuesday. We had an interesting and exciting morning; we got to skype a children's author (I can't seem to remember her name now, it was a long one). It was a lot of fun, the children absolutely adored her because she read two of her stories to them, and she also had the kids read a long on the repetitive words. One thing in particular I noticed was that when one of the boys was misbehaving, Mrs. Wensel handled it perfectly. She quietly mouthed to him to sit indian style, and to be quiet, which he did immediately. I don't think I would have known what to do when we were skyping someone, and I had to deal with a student not cooperating. I asked her afterwards how they listen so well and she said she is sincere and repetitive with them, but in a nice way.
During this time, I observed how Mrs. Wensel managed assessment. It is sometimes difficult to do this I have noticed, because while she gives feedback to each student individually, it is hard to keep up with the class as a whole. It becomes time consuming. I have noticed that she manages this by setting a certain time limit to giving feedback individually.
I have participated in a lot of preparation for this class. I tend to come right at 8 in the morning when school first starts, when the 'early morning' students are there. During this time, they quietly read a book or write in their journals, so I like to take this time to help out Mrs. Wensel any way that I can. Usually it is just cutting out papers for their activities later on that day, or picking out a book for story time. There is usually not a ton of things to do, but I try to use my time wisely and help out Mrs. Wensel vs just sitting there observing. I love to go around the class and ask if they need help with anything. I enjoy their cute questions they have for me. The other preparation I have done is I came up with a song to teach them one day about shapes, which was a lot of fun.
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