Ms. Brown's Class: January 25th

I wanted to talk today about a couple times Ms. Brown offered choices in the classroom today.
Sometime earlier in the day before I came to the classroom, the students had filled plastic cups with snow from outside and were asked to make a prediction about how much water would be left after the snow melted-if there would be more water, the same amount of water, or less water than there was snow in the cup. I got to the classroom when the kids were coming back in from lunch and the snow had already melted quite a bit. When it was time for science, I helped Ms. Brown put all the kids' cups back on their desks and they met at the rug to talk about how there was a lot less water in the cups than there was snow and they brainstormed ideas about why that might be. She then told them that after they wrote about what they observed in their science journal, they needed to choose a place to put their cup in the classroom where they thought it might evaporate the fastest. Together, the children brainstormed some advantages and disadvantages to the different places.
There was also an opportunity for the students to make a choice today after they finished their language arts assignments. Ms. Brown gave them choices such as drawing a picture, writing a letter to someone, or reading a book.
Ms. Brown also gave me the choice to prepare a game or an activity for her class and said to just let her know if there was something special I would like to do with them while I was volunteering in her class.

I also wanted to mention some things that Ms. Brown does to make her classroom a positive community. I observed last week when I was in her classroom that one of the other students had pretty bad gas while they were all sitting at the rug together and the other students were laughing at him. Ms. Brown gently reminded the kids that sometimes when we have gas, we can't control it and already feel pretty embarrassed and that by laughing at him, they were not "filling his cup" but taking away from it. Today, one of the kids had a cough and one of the others yelled at him to stop coughing. Ms. Brown reminded him that sometimes we can't control our coughs and rather than yelling, we could make sure our friend is okay. I really appreciate how she helps them work on being a caring community.

The last thing I wanted to do was talk about some clear routines that I have observed. When the class comes in from recess or lunch, the first thing they do is meet at the rug. At the rug, they sing and do actions to a song together before Ms. Brown instructs them on what they will do next. During the instructional time, she keeps them very engaged and involved. She then will give them very clear instructions on what their next tasks will be. When she needs to make an announcement when they're doing their tasks, she'll say "Hey, Kiddos!" and they all call back "Hey Ms. Brown!" to show that they're paying attention. Even though its a first grade class and the kids have a lot of energy, Ms. Brown keeps them engaged and on task with these clear routines.