Mrs Turner Observation

On October 13, I observed the second grade reading and grammar classroom of Mrs. Turner at Elkhorn City Elementary. The students were sitting at tables with their attention directed towards the smart board. They were instructed to begin their D.O.L., or daily oral learning activity, led by the teacher. The smart board was pulled up to where you could see Mrs. Turner writing on her own notebook paper as to visually walk them through heading up their papers and the correct format of sentences. The D.O.L. consisted of five sentences, each with two grammatical mistakes they were to fix. She would spell one of their spelling words incorrectly and they would have to recognize the error and fix the spelling. This week they were focused on “R” controlled words regarding the spelling list. (dirt, turtle, person, turn) This gave them a sort of consistency of the sound to determine the correct vowel to pair the “r” with. In our class, we just reviewed that the vowel before the “R” in the syllable is manipulated to sound neither long nor short. I recognized the students grasping the concept as they were going over each word they made relations back to the other words on the list. I was proud to hear the students giving suggestions to other words that are “R controlled” that were not

The word they were to fix was “siting.” It was difficult for the students to comprehend that adding “ing” a lot of times doubles the preceding consonant. Once one of the students revealed the mistake, all of the students seemed to have their memory jogged of the concept but still wondered why. I believe that at this grade level they are beginning to make further connections as to why that we have these principles and rules for language. At the first grade level class that I observed they didn 't wonder why, they simply accepted the words as sight