Bailey Campbell

Dr. Sovis
Part 2: Seeing Classroom Culture

Building an Insider View of the Classroom Community

● They work independently but also together with a partner.
● I’ve noticed them participating in pair and shares and the teacher wrote out steps to
creating a realistic fiction story and they followed it as well as creating a mountain map,
that mapped out their storyline.
● 10 minutes for Word Work (grammar) and 40 minutes for Writing
● Always grammar first then writing. She will share example of what they will be doing in
writing.
● There are a total 29 students in the classroom. On the first day they were in groups, now
they are in rows all facing the front of the classroom.
● Writing time is very quiet and independent. The students rarely ask questions and never
talk to each other unless told to. They are very focused on writing.

Organizing a Rich Environment for Learning

● They are all writing realistic fiction pieces. Together as a class they help the teacher
figure out what she is going to write for hers. The expectation for their pieces are to use
dialogue, feeling and correct punctuation and grammar.
● The students are very engaged during writing time. Some tend to struggle what to do next
or what to write next in their story, but they all work hard.
● Students have time to learn through talk when they do pair shares. They are able to read
their story to a partner, and get feedback from it.
● I feel like the students are developing a sense of self as a writer. Each of their writing is
so different and creative and I can tell that they are really getting into the story by the
description they use.

Understanding How Language & Literacy Develop

● When we first get there it’s snack time for them, so they are talking with their friends and
quietly eating or reading. They all seem to get a long and it doesn’t seem like anyone has
a problem with one another.
● The students know how about subject-predicate, and seems to being doing good with
pronouns.
● They have been drilled to use correct punctuation and capitalization otherwise they have
to fix it during recess, so that has been looking really good in their work. They are
struggling on spelling and run on sentences.
Personal and Sociocultural Inflences
● The demographics are:
Black- 4 Asian- 0 White- 620 Hispanic- 32
Native American- 38 Native Hawaiian- 1 Two or more races- 5
Male- 345 Female- 355
Free Lunch- 297 Reduced Cost- 57 (Title 1)
● I’ve noticed a lot of kids like sports such as football, basketball, etc. They like video
games, animals etc.
● What are they good at? It seems to me they are good at being creative and imaginative. I
can’t really tell for sure.
● There is a mix of students, but majority of the students are white. (620/700)
● When looking at the demographics they are students who speak their native tongue which
is spanish, native american or hawaiian/pacific islander. I don’t know their access to
literacy materials.
● They spell words how they sound. For example I saw a student who wrote “turtel”
instead of “turtle.” My case study child wrote ‘house’ like ‘hawse’ and instead of ‘heal’
he wrote ‘hell.’