Teacher promotion of positive classroom environment in second grade reading instruction

Classroom Observation and Commentary
How the Teacher Promotes a Positive Classroom Environment for Reading Instruction
The teacher promoted a positive classroom environment for reader instruction first by greeting the class warmly and announcing the activity that the class was going to do in a warm and enthusiastic tone. The teacher then used cue cards with large print words in different colors to go over the various vocabulary terms that the class was going to read in their reading material for the day. The teacher sounded out the first few words and then invited the class to sound them out with her. Thus the teaching approach was varied and oriented towards appealing to diverse learning styles (Souto-Manning & Martell, 2016). Then she asked if anyone could spell the word. If a student raised a hand but had difficulty spelling or reading the word, the teacher encouraged the student by asking helpful questions in a warm and friendly and encouraging tone, such as, “What sound do the letters ‘ck’ make?” and if the student was able to answer correctly the teacher gave a warm expression of approbation, such as, “Good job! I knew you could do it!” The students would invariably show their pleasure at this form of external motivation and smile happily in return, which is consistent with demonstrations of positive reinforcement according to (Mazur, 2016).
The teacher addressed the students by name asked who would like to take turns reading. With students who read well, she was just as encouraging and warm as students whose reading was halting and uncertain. She never dismissed a student for failing to read a word out loud correctly and always encouraged with the same line of questioning in an attempt to get students to think back to the earlier part of the lesson in which she explained the sounds of the letters and practiced reading the vocabulary words with the students. Every action and tone of the teacher was measured and implemented to achieve a warm and friendly environment; however, it was never so light that the children misread her warmth as a cue for rambunctiousness. The teacher’s tones and attitude were supportive of an ordered by positive learning environment.
How the Teacher Engages Students During Reading Instruction
After going around the class once, the teacher gathered the students together separately who required further assistance and spent about fifteen minutes with them working on their reading at a small table, while the other students read a brief excerpt and answered the questions on their own. The teacher working with the slower students read the same excerpt, having each student at the table take a turn answering one question. In this way she kept all the students together at the same pace but was able to devote extra time and attention to those students who were struggling. By taking time to work with these students separately the teacher was differentiating instruction for each segment, which is a recommended practice for promoting inclusion (Souto-Manning & Martell, 2016).
With the whole class together once more, the teacher engaged students about the reading by bringing into the question concepts from their own lives that they could associate with the reading: for example, she knew the favorite TV shows of many of the children and related characters in the reading to some of these TV characters to get the children engaged with the discussion. This helped immensely and is in accordance with the technique of using background information to personalize the lesson (Wanner & Palmer, 2015). The students were also engaged by doing a reflection exercise in which the students were asked to think about what they had read and answer a question about a character’s motives and method of overcoming an obstacle. Finally, a plot diagram was developed with all the students working together on a big sheet of paper in groups to construct the plot of the reading. This was clearly something they had done before because all the students knew what to do. The teacher had the large sheets of paper prepared so that no time was wasted. This helped move the class along smoothly. A few students hung back in their groups while others took charge, and their lack of engagement was something that could have been improved upon, but the teacher was going over notes for the next lesson and did not address this problem.
How the Teacher Makes Links to Prior Knowledge During Reading Instruction
Links to prior knowledge were made when the teacher asked the class what certain vocabulary words in the text meant: they were words that the class had studied in prior weeks. Various hands went up to answer questions, and the teacher used these words to further link to prior knowledge by asking students to use them in a new sentence. Then she asked students to find a word that they were not familiar with in a new reading which she put up on the power point presentation. The students were asked to use a method they had learned earlier regarding using context clues to make sense of the word that was in the sentence. First, she asked whether any students could identify a context clue. Then she herself pointed out some and asked what they suggested about the sentence. When a student gave an answer, she wrote this on the board and before long had a list of context clues that the students could use to make guesses about what a word meant. When the word was finally defined, the teacher linked that word back to a concept they had read about the week earlier, regarding a practice in another culture. She asked the students to recollect why that culture practiced that activity and then asked the students if they did anything that was similar in their own lives. This allowed for a healthy comparison of cultures while linking to prior knowledge and getting the students to engage in critical thinking for the reading lesson: overall, it flowed very well and had the feeling of being spontaneous, though it was clear from her notes that she had meticulously planned this activity specifically to link the reading to prior knowledge and re-visit old lesson activities so as to reinforce them. This is a very important step in reading instruction, as Afflerbach (2017) notes. The teacher could have focused on specific letter combinations to go back over word pronunciations, as there had been a few students struggling with this, but the teacher missed these opportunities.
Changes to Suggest for Improvement of Reading Instruction
The pacing of the reading lesson overall was good, but there were moments when it seemed the teacher was moving too quickly from activity to activity in an effort to get through her lesson plan. It might have been more beneficial to spend time on one aspect of the lesson instead of trying to hit each part of it in a way that allowed too little time for reinforcement. For instance, there were numerous occasions where using context clues could have been expanded upon in the initial reading, but it was clear that the teacher was saving this activity for later. She could have engaged in scaffolding by first giving a brief explanation of how to use context clues to remind her readers of what they were and thus prepared the stage for the later activity when the lesson of how to use them could have been reinforced—however, she missed this opportunity and did not engage in any scaffolding, which can be a very helpful teaching technique (Gottlieb, 2006).
The teacher also could have done more in terms of building background. This is a technique that allows the teacher to link the learning content areas to aspects of the students’ own lives. She did this a little bit, but only on the one occasion as though she had deliberately made it a part of her plan to engage in background building at a certain point in the lesson. This made it seem inorganic and the lesson could have been much improved had she spent more time linking the content to the student’s lives.
The teacher also did not implement lesson delivery very well. The goals of the lesson were not defined at the outset, so it was somewhat ambiguous what the purpose of the reading exercise was. Students were not given any information that explained what they would be focusing on, other than the going over of certain vocabulary words. As Gottlieb (2006) shows, lesson delivery is an important part of the teaching approach and the learning acquisition process because it puts before the learner the specific goals and the methods by which those goals will be achieved throughout the lesson. The teacher’s lesson was somewhat wide-ranging and went from vocabulary to reading to context clues to plot diagramming, so it lacked direction and form. It seemed as though the teacher were simply moving from one idea to the next without having an overarching focus that would allow the students to benefit from a complete vision and sense of purpose with what they were doing.
Overall the lesson was delivered well enough and the teacher was positive throughout and kept the students engaged with the reading material. They practiced pronouncing words, comprehending the reading material and engaging in critical thinking, all of which are important for a reading lesson. The main points that could be improved upon would be pacing of the lesson (slowing it down to allow for deeper acquisition of knowledge), building background and lesson delivery.


References
Afflerbach, P. (2017). Understanding and using reading assessment, K–12. ASCD.
Gottlieb, M. (2006). Assessing English language learners: Bridges from language
proficiency to academic achievement. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Mazur, J. E. (2016). Learning & behavior. Routledge.
Souto-Manning, M., & Martell, J. (2016). Reading, writing, and talk: Inclusive teaching
strategies for diverse learners, K–2. Teachers College Press.
Wanner, T., & Palmer, E. (2015). Personalising learning: Exploring student and teacher
perceptions about flexible learning and assessment in a flipped university course. Computers & Education, 88, 354-369.