Part 1: Chapter 9- Honeymoom Period Between Scarlet and Principal Now Over

Literacy in our environment

 
Finally June came around and Carla was still pleased with my accomplishments as a first year teacher. My only difficulty was a  literacy stumbling block on my last formal observation. I was specifically told to teach a shared reading lesson. Preparing the formal observation took a lot of patience and time to make it work exactly the way I was supposed to teach the lesson.  I had to really plan accordingly to make it as developmentally appropriate for the children. The bottom line  is that Principal Annie was asking me to teach literacy instruction that early childhood AS WELL AS literacy instructors know to be inappropriate. 

The objective was for the children to use picture clues to identify the first letter of each color word. I used the book The Birthday Cake. If any of you are familiar with this story, you will know that on  each page  it has  only 2 words (brown cake, pink cake). Pre-kindergarten children need extra reinforcement so they are able to know that the first letter of the word 'brown' begins with the letter 'b'. I had to go backwards a few steps and redo the pages by adding sentence strips of the uppercase and lowercase letter for each page. Now the children were able to match the word with the color. On my 'satisfactory' rated lesson, my next steps to improve my skills as a teacher are as follows:
[SIC]

•   Lessons must continue to be planned after reviewing the Pre-Kindergarten standards. All lessons must have a teaching point and clear opportunities for children to be actively engaged throughout. The lesson must be differentiated appropriately to ensure learning for every child.
• Students must be given white boards and markers to use while on the rug in order to correctly practice letter writing. The use of white boards and markers must be modeled for the children. "Air writing" does not serve any purpose.
• You will continue to visit other teachers and classes to hone and improve your classroom management skills, lesson planning and delivery skills and classroom routine. [SIC]

Hmmmnn. The last time I checked my curriculum, lesson planning and early childhood resources, it has been validated that 'air/sky writing' is an integral part of the learning process for young children. Air-writing is multi-sensory, tactile and also teaches children to use their fine motor skills through movement and touch. It is a widely used practice for many teachers across the United States, not necessarily to ensure that children identify and know their letters. Air or sky writing is mostly used for fine motor purposes.  Also, sky writing is the fundamental component in the literacy program Fundations. Second, I had to follow the annoying and ridiculous Teacher's College Reading Workshop Model which is a kindergarten through 5 grade program. Teacher's College specifically does not  have a pre-k component because they even know that it is not developmentally appropriate. Third, I personally (and most other early childhood teachers too) think it is a little ridiculous to have 4 year olds sit for a whole class instruction learning their letters on dry erase boards. Not only was it recommended that they use dry erase boards for whole class instruction, but thy also needed to write their letters stick straight and perfectly almost similar to how a first grader should be writing their letters, on the line only!

Now lets look at Carla's feedback on my performance:

[SIC] Jun 11 2009
my pleasure...that's what i'm there for..next year you are on your own.....no more mentoring...but you'll be just fine..you know everything you have to do..have a great weekend. [SIC]

******I would have loved it if Carla was my principal, not my mentor. She is definitely smarter, more capable and knows how to speak with people (and not put them down). But this clearly just is wishful thinking!