Real Life Inquiry

For my real life inquiry I observed in a residential K-12 school in a first grade classroom. The class sizes were small, so there are more opportunities for one-on-ones and observations. The students really benefit from these experiences and the teacher tries to take full advantage of them. I observed a guided reading lesson that was not exactly like the video we saw in class. The teacher presented the book to the students and asked them what they thought the book was going to be about. They had a small discussion and then she let the students read the book together. The students took turns reading each page of the book. The students helped each other with words that they could not identify. If they both were unsure of the word the teacher tried to help them use context clues and letter sounds to identify it.

This worked very well and I loved seeing the students working together. They were cooperating with each other and were very engaged in the lesson. They enjoyed helping each other and were proud when they knew the word and they got to help their friends. It was a great experience seeing this integrated into the classroom. The grouping of the students was really effective because one of the students was on a slighter higher reading level than the other student. After they finished the reading the teacher had a small discussion about it but mostly the students talked about the pictures and what they liked or did not like about the book.

This seemed like a positive experience and something that I will definitely integrate into my classroom. I want my students to become independent and associate reading with pleasure. This was a relaxing but engaging activity that the students were very motivated to participate in. I was wondering if the teacher should have maybe had more interactions with the student. How much involvement do you think is necessary by the teacher? What do you think the teacher could have done to make it more engaging?