NEW FEATURE FOR CORNERSTONE NEWSLETTERS:

In this Cornerstone newsletter, we begin a new column to appear in every edition: Observing a student in literacy-learning opportunities. You will be surprised at the revelations gleaned from closely observing one child over a period of time. As a prescribed function in the Cornerstone Annual School Reviews, each reviewer spends very hours observing one child in one setting during the literacy block. There is much to be harvested from the experience. (Names are fictitious; the rest is reality!)

Student Shadowing - Kindergarten

Walking into the classroom Martha (pseudonym), joined the group on the rug as they sang to the kindergarten teacher that they were ‘ready'. The students shared the high expectations for behavior;

“Our eyes are ready, our bodies are ready, our minds are ready!”

After the community building singing exercise, Martha followed carefully with her eyes as the class reviewed and reflected on the message from the previous day.

Martha and her peers stared intently at the teacher and the white board with eager anticipation to hear a Morning Message that the teacher would construct in front of them. Martha's hands clapped in appreciation for the picture the teacher drew to show Harvey and Horatio in the hall. She giggled to a friend when the teacher used a descriptive word set about the story character…'runny nose'. Ms. F. (teacher) scanned the room as she asked for help in drawing the picture to help everyone visualize the words.

“Can you show me a worried look? Horatio looked worried.”

Martha scrunched her face to a neighbor and smiled as the teacher said, “What great thinkers!”

Crossing long black stocking covered legs, Martha leaned forward as she and her friends ‘helped' the teacher decide where capital letters would be placed in the sentence. All eyes were glued to the board as the teacher reread the sentence to ‘check'. Martha's black braids bobbed as her head moved to tick off each word in the sentence. The teacher wrote the word crying in the sentence as the class watched she jumped up and put the ‘King of Ing Hat' on her head. I watched in amazement as the children absorbed a quick lesson in context of the inflected word ending ing.

Waving her hand Martha moved forward to answer Ms. F's query:

“Is there anything up here that you know?”

Taking turns the children circled letters, inflected endings, and print conventions to reflect on how much they had learned in the lesson and over a six week time period. Martha had trouble about proper names being capitalized. After an appropriate wait time, a neighbor helped her. I observed many instances during the morning of children, teachers, interns, and Martha valuing each other with a loving community attitude.

The lesson was succinct and Martha and her peers were still eagerly attentive. Oral language developing in front of my eyes! I was amazed when the children were lead into a discussion of proper pronoun case and usage. A student pointed out that him was used to speak of Horatio because he was a boy. While the teacher added him to the word wall, she continued to pull every ounce of learning from Martha and her friends.

“Who did Harvey give the soft tissue to?” (The story said to him referring to Horatio.) What does the story actually say?'

After waiting and rereading the sentence, someone said him means Horatio!

“Who can tell me a three letter word that ends with m and starts with h?'

Martha and her friends thought as their teacher bragged about what great thinkers they were. You could see the pride in their body demeanor as they sat up a little straighter and smiled at each other as they realized that they were part of a literacy community.

The teacher reflected with the students, “Yesterday we had a hard time with the word her! We did better with him.” All twenty-three heads bobbed in agreement.

Algier was asked to be in charge of the word him on the wall. As everyone looked forward, the teacher Ms. F, brought attention to the shape details of the word, “There is a tall letter here and two short letters.”

Martha and several of the girls whispered tall and short to themselves as their eyes followed the teacher's fingers. Each child stepped forward as the class read their name off the journal cover and moved quickly to Algier to to spell h..i..m on the Word Wall.

Ms. F. called Martha to her after the last child stepped to the writing tables. Martha looked down at the floor when the teacher asked her about the crayon marking at her place. In a business-like nonjudgmental manner, Ms. F. said,

“Clean it up. It isn't right to mark on things that belong to all of us.”

Martha was very disappointed in herself as evidenced by the pained look on her face. Disappointing Ms. F was not something that she wanted any part of.

Moving into Writing Workshop all adults in the room (4) were engaged with students. A sheet on how to help students with journal writing was passed out to a volunteer who settled in at Martha's table. Moving to the table and settling in, Martha took a crayon and hurriedly drew circles and sticks and a human figure to cover the whole paper. She appeared to be stressed as the teacher took a seat beside her and asked:

“What are you going to write? Say it first.”

Martha replied, “I am getting balloons. I am smiling.”

Ms. F. asked, “What do we do first?” (Very obviously these children had a definite procedure for journal writing.)

Martha replied that she should have written in pencil. Martha had trouble recalling what her writing thought was as the teacher prompted her to look at her picture. Ms.F moved to pull an alphabet sheet from a folder to aid Martha in letter sounds she was struggling with as she constructed her sentences. Throughout the process, Martha was confident that she would have her teacher's full attention and her fair share of time. At times, she gave wrong answers and later smiled and remarked that she was teasing. It did appear that she relished the attention and care given her by the teacher. The expectations for meaning were high and strategies to get it ‘down' were obviously a ritual and routing that Martha knew well. She cross-checked sounds and spelling, grabbed the King of Ing crown as she added ing to smiling and happily completed her writing. The teacher asked if she could write the message in adult writing and the two of them reread the entry together. Martha stayed with the print and reread it several times on her own. Reflecting on the lesson, Martha and the teacher talked about her trouble with spacing and she smiled as she agreed to try to leave the spaces for the reader! I smiled to myself as I heard Ms. F.'s voice intonation and mannerism reproduced in Martha's third reading of her journal. It was obvious that Martha adores Ms. F., wants to be just like her, and really is becoming a reader and writer in kindergarten! It was evident that Martha was experiencing the Cornerstone Principles of learning in a classroom where learning was social, the class community was embedded with literacy knowledge. Each student had membership in the literacy community and was very engaged in meaningful work. This child was empowered to do the hard work of learning to read.