February 14th Post- Molly Shelton

I thought the Breightfelder article was very helpful. I thought it gave so many great ideas for how to keep the classroom organized for the teacher and students. While the organized schedule boards were intended to help student with disabilities, I think that these boards will benefit all students in the classroom. The article mentions that many times students with disabilities need more visual instructions than they do audial. We have to realize that students without disabilities may be better visual learners as well therefore I think that these ideas would only benefit students.

I enjoyed the Maple article as well. I thought that the parent homework assignment was a GREAT idea. It is a really great way to get parents involved with their child's education right from the start. I think you can really get a feel or who your students are by how others describe them. I see so many positive aspects of this assignment. I really would like to do this in my future classroom.

I actually see a lot of classroom talk in my placement. There is talk before, during and after every story that is read. At this age, kids love to talk about anything and everything so it is very easy for the teacher to have a discussion with the students. However, conversations tend to move off topic often. This is when the teacher must step in and scaffold the students thinking back to what the discussion is suppose to be on. One way to do this is ask "Thank you for sharing. How does that relate to the story?" Overall, I am very impressed with the classroom talk in this classroom.