Entry #11 - Learn & Serve

Learn and Serve went well as always today. I arrived to the classroom as the students were eating their breakfast. During this time, all of us teachers walked around and helped each student as we greeted them. The students took a little bit longer today to transition, they were moving very slow. However, after the students finished we headed to the rug for morning meeting. After morning meeting, Mr. Azzarella went through the alphabet song that he normally does and then the students learned a new letter. Each week the students learn a new letter and they spend the week learning about that letter. For example, this week the students were learning the letter "M". Mr. Azzarella first introduced the letter to the students and explained that it was a consonant. He explained what sounds the letter "M" made and had the students repeat the sounds as he did. After the students finished with these exercises Mr. Azzarella placed a sentence on the white board that included a bunch of "M's", capital and lowercase. Mr. Azzarella read the sentence to the students and then called on each of them to come up and find a letter "M" and circle it. Mr. Azzarella does this each week with the students. He makes up a sentence and has the students identify the letter in them. This allows Mr. Azzarella to focus on students individually, while still working with the class as a whole. For each student he helps them out in different ways and asks them various questions as they find the letter. This is because the kids in his classroom are all at various levels. For example, for a student who knows the alphabet well, and is able to find the letter "M" quickly, Mr. Azzarella may ask them if the letter "M" is in the beginning of the word or at the end. Our textbook calls this differentiated instruction which "refers to the changes in teacher strategies and curriculum made necessary by the characteristics of the exceptional child" (Kirk, Gallagher, Coleman & Anastasiow pg. 165). The students finished up this activity and then went onto their letter centers. After letter centers, the class cleaned up and went off to lunch. I thought it was great to see Mr. Azzarella using differentiated instruction today. We have learned a lot about it in class but to see it actually being used in the classroom helped me better understand how it can be used in a variety of ways.