Nonverbal Communication In The Classroom

It was only my first day at Madison South Elementary and I learned so much! After meeting my teacher, Mrs. Mikelait, she answered a lot of questions about the students, the school, her classroom, and some of her instructional methods. I was very happy with the class size of 18 students. There is an equal ratio of nine boys to nine girls. The students are very diverse in their backgrounds and learning. In the class, there are 12 Caucasian, 4 African American (3 are mixed), and 2 Hispanic students. Two of the students have speech difficulties. The boy is very hard to understand, however, some of his peers are able to understand him better than adults. The girl is actually nonverbal. Mrs. Mikelait communicates with her using picture

From 9:00am to 10:45am the students work on reading. At 10:30 the students take a break to dance and move about to a program called Noodle. This could be silently on their own, with a partner, with Mrs. Mikelait one-on-one, or as a whole class. After reading from 10:45 am to 11:05am the students work on spelling. This word work packet used by the students includes tracing and writing words and copying sentences. Mrs. Mikelait said she felt that this tremendously helps her students when it comes to spelling. She even said one of the second grade teachers told her that her students specifically were excelling in spelling. The students also talk about rhymes and rhyming words at this time. At 11:15am the students go to lunch and come back from recess at 12:00pm. Within their morning work time Mrs. Mikelait provides break times for the bathroom and drinks regularly. During reading, there are students pulled out to work with an Intervention Specialist. The Intervention Specialist doesn’t have set schedule yet, but does student pullouts for an hour each day. The speech pathologist and occupational therapist also pull students out throughout the

Mikelait’s classroom. For math, she uses the program Everyday Math. When teaching writing, Mrs. Mikelait uses a program by Lucy Calkins. The spelling program used is Word Journeys and has made a huge difference in the classroom. Mrs. Mikelait uses Journeys for reading that comes with book sets that she uses with the students. She also uses Fountas and Pinnell for reading and phonics lessons. This is the first year that F and P have been used for phonics. Once all the scores for reading have been collected the students will be divided into guided reading groups of four to six students. It will be my job as an AU intern to monitor, help, and get to know students for the first few weeks, but eventually I will be able to be more involved in these guided reading groups once they are formed. I also got some advice from Mrs. Mikelait about her classroom management strategies. Her main strategy is a color chart where students can either clip down or up depending on their behavior. They clip up for good behavior and down for not following the rules or instructions. If they clip down they lose recess time. A not is also sent home to the parents. I was impressed when Mrs. Mikelait said that parent communication was excellent with her class this year. She also encourages students’ good behavior with “brag tags.” When getting students’ attention, she often says “mac and cheese” and