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Introduction

My name is Celest Edmonds, and I had the privilege of observing Ms. Katie Fierek and her 4th grade classroom at Keene Mill Elementary School. The process to be ready to observe was relatively easy. I submitted a form online with the GMU Field Experience office and they were able to place me at Keene Mill, only 12 minutes from where I already live. Once I completed my fingerprinting and background check with Gatehouse, they handed me over my very own FCPS (volunteer) badge with my picture on it. I was ready to observe!

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Schedule

Ms. Fierek was very flexible, and flowed with whichever days and times I was available to come in. I was not her first student observer, so she was very familiar with the process. She emailed me her daily schedule with the students, and I emailed her the days and times I would be coming in. I came in for 8 different observing secessions to complete my 15 hours, and I was in the classroom for 2-3 days a week. I observed for 2 hours each secession.

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Classroom organization and management

Below is what the class daily schedule/agenda looked like!

9:15-9:35 Morning Meeting

9:35-10:30 Writing Workshop

10:30-11:15 Reading Workshop

11:15-11:35 Recess

11:35-12:35 Math

12:35-1:05 Jump-remediation and enrichment time

1:14-1:44 Lunch

2:00-3:00 Science/Social Studies

3:00-4:00 Specials

4:00 Dismissal

This schedule was on the board for all to see. Ms. Fierek would also write specific activities the class would be doing next to writing workshop, reading workshop, math, and science/social studies. She would always have written “Today we will...” and “So that we can...” next to each lesson. An example would be, written next to the writing workshop, “Today we will...create detailed sentences” “So that we can... describe who, what, where, and when”. Kids never had to question what was going on during the day! 

She had her classroom very organized. Ms. Fierek had a station for the laptops, bins with books neatly organized, coat/back pack hooks for the students, and folder bins for each student to keep their school paperwork in. 

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Instructional planning and delivery

When it comes to planning, Ms. Fierek worked with her team to develop plans and she said they were always complete at least 3-4 days before hand. 

From my observation she delivered a very clean and clear lesson to her students. What I felt was very helpful was that she always had an assistant with her to help her with her special needs students. She would assign independent time and reach out to those students to give them additional help. 

My personal favorite to observe was the writing and reading workshop. The stories, language, and different reading levels among the students was so insightful. Ms. Fierek really had to tailor her lesson plan to her students by making sure she hit all of the different learning styles. 

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Student engagement

Ms. Fierek has a way of keeping her students engaged! She would verbally read out loud, have students read by themselves, and even have students read to each other. The students weren't restricted to their desks, they could also grab a pillow and read or do independent work on the carpet. Ms. Fierek also had a lot of hands on activities to keep the students engaged. An example would be for science, they were put in groups to make a flash light. The students loved that activity! They also could play math games on their laptops to practice their math skills. 

She would keep their attention by saying “class-class” and they would say “what-what!”. Ms. Fierek also wore a microphone in the classroom so each student could hear her, and stay engaged. If a student was too distracted or zoned out, we should give a friendly reminder, or have a quiet talk in the hallway to try to refocus the student on classwork. 

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Just finished reading Miss. Nelson is missing and taking taking notes of who, what, where, and when. Fun Fact: The same classroom number that is in the book, is also Ms. Fierek’s classroom number! Room 207! 

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Creative and critical thinking

Ms. Fierek did a great job having her students work their creative and critical thinking. An example of a lesson she did was reading them a book called “Miss. Nelson is Missing.” The point of the lesson was to keep track of important information so that they could note who, what, where, and when of the book. The students had read the book before but really enjoyed having Ms. Fierek read it to them. After Ms. Fierek and the class identified who, what, where, and when, all written on the board, she came up with a new sentence that had who, what, where, when, and in their notebooks they had to come up with as many different ways of writing the sentence without changing the who, what, where, and when. An example of this would be “The tricky student spied though the broken window in the dark gym when no one was looking.” The who is “the tricky student” the what is spied through the broken window” the where is “in the dark gym” and when is “when no one was looking.” It was amazing to see how many times they could move around the who, where, where and when in that sentence. After multiple students shared what they got, they all were able to work independently and construct new sentences on their own as part of their assignment. This activity really got the students creative and critical thinking going!

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Ms. Fierek at her desk, helping students, and a assistant at the desk in the front helping students as well! Students also working independently. :) 

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Differentiation and students with special needs

Ms. Fierek’s class has a variety of students. 4 are ESOL students, and 2 were special needs. An assistant would come in everyday to help with the class. It wasn’t the same assistant everyday, but the class knew them each very well. Ms. Fierek would go about her lesson as usual and these students would follow along, with the occasional friendly, quiet reminder from the assistant to pay attention or help show them what instructions were given for the activity. Ms. Fierek would also always make time for independent work, and would gather groups at her desk during that time to help the ESOL or special needs students, and an assistant would be at another desk in the front of the room helping the ESOL or special needs, and any other student who needed individual help. The impression I got was that the ESOL and special needs students were never left out or behind. I felt the dynamic of the classroom was good and ran smoothly!

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Ms. Fierek helping students with writing, at her desk, in the back of the classroom!

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Interview - In person

CE: How do you arrange your classroom seating to effectively compliment your lesson plan?

KF: We have new desks, we went under renovation like a year and a half ago, and we got these new desks which are very challenging to work with because they’re these really weird shapes. So I used to do rows, or a “U”, or all kinds of different arrangements throughout the year but the only thing that works with these desks are table groups. I have 21 kids this year instead of 30 that I had last year, so I have a lot more space this year where I am actually able to have a morning meeting area. I have kids groups that are very close to the front and I tend to put the kids who don’t need a lot of support in the every front, so that the kids who do need more of behavioral reminders are back here near me, and I teach from both places. I’ll teach back here from the carpet, we’ll use the board that’s over here, or we’ll go up front if we’re projecting something or teaching something from up there, so it really varies to where we’re going.

CE: What are some of your favorite classroom management strategies?

KF: I think having some overall signal for how to get their attention is important. There’s lots of different ways, I had a team mate a few years ago who used to say “who-dy-who?” and his class would have to call out “what-what!” So, uhm, we do “class-class” and they repeat “yes-yes!” or if its “classsss” they say “yesss” uhm or a lot of times I do “clap once if you can hear me” and “clap twice if youre listening” so I think that’s really important. The school does the silent hand-raising signal, but I prefer something that’s a little bit more vocal so that they can hear, and then you know if you’re having conversations with kids that need redirection kinds of stuff we do a lot of walking into the hallway to have those kinds of conversations quietly instead of in front of other kids.

CE: How do you format/accessorize the classroom in a way that facilitates the learning of all students?

KF: So I think that because I teach from multiple different places its really helpful. We also have the roger system, the microphone, is really helpful because of that sound field that makes it so that everyone can hear no matter what. I try to do as much teaching as I can when we’re all together clustered down here so we can use the board and be close together because when they are at their desk there are a lot of them that are away from the board, so it is nice to have them close together. Then you know just trying to arrange the rest of the furniture so that things are accessible to the kids. I’ve made the supplies in a place that they can easily get to them, I redid all of out computers because we had a computer cart that was just the biggest pain ever, so I came up with a new way to do that so that its much more efficient for the kids, so just making the things they use everyday really accessible to them. 

CE: How do you manage student conduct?

KF: Well it begins at the beginning of the year with just setting extremely high expectations, and then you know practicing things, practicing what its supposed to look like, practicing what its supposed to sound like when we get in line, when we travel, and transition and just constantly having extremely high expectations of their behavior and reminding them when their not doing that.

CE: What is the most unexpected thing that has happened in your class and how did you handle the situation?

KF: I have had students that have had behavioral issues where they’ve thrown things, tipped over desks, things like that. I had a really sweet special needs student who was very close to my personal area once, so I think it all depends on the situation. In that case I had to redirect him to take a look at what we’re doing right here. In the case of the student who was throwing things, and in a place where he couldn’t quite control himself, it was getting everybody else out of the classroom and then finding the support for him that he needed.

CE: What are some of the most difficult aspects of planning and delivering an effective lesson?

KF: I think the hardest part is the amount of content we have to teach. We’re constantly talking about how much we have to shove at them, and the fact that we don’t have a lot of time to really go in depth with a lot of things. So I think timing is a big piece of it and even as much as we love our extra planning time with Spanish and steam, it’s really hard cause we miss that much more time for social studies and science so I think time is the biggest problem.

CE: How far in advance do you plan your lesson and what strategies do use to make them effective?

KF: I plan with my team almost every day, we like to plan a week or two out. Sometimes it’s just kind of an outline of you know here’s where we’re gonna go, even map out for the remainder of the quarter. Here are the different things we need to teach in math, you know, what’s that gonna look like over the various weeks, but we’re usually well planned out with lessons ahead of time of what we’re planning on doing. At least 3 or 4 days, and have a good plan of where were going for them during the month and during the quarter.

CE: How does your first lesson plan compare to your planning skills now?

KF: Well its dramatically different. When I started here, it was after thanksgiving, and I was the forth teacher in their classroom. I had just finished my student teaching, so looking at that, and I was in a wing of the school all the way over there, and my team mate was here, and my other team mate was outside in a trailer, it was really difficult. I think it was a lot of work sheets and things like that and so much about teaching has changed in the 12 years that I have been doing this that its dramatically different now. We try to do a lot more hands on experiences, we do a lot more things that involve movement, interactive read aloud, so I think we’ve gone from very worksheet things to problem based learning types of activities.

CE: How do you evaluate the effectiveness of your lesson at the end of the lesson?

KF: I do a lot of check ins to see where the kids are. I’ll do a zero to five where are you; zero im lost in the woods, I have no idea what you said, somebody come rescue me. Five I totally get this, I could absolutely do this independently, or somewhere in between. So I do a lot of that so that they can self reflect and we’ll do a lot of exit tickets as well to just kind of quickly check your knowledge. Did you pay attention? Did you hear the things that we were saying? If you walk away and nobody did well on that then you have to evaluate. It’s a combination of did you not hear me well or was that something that I did wrong and that we need to revisit this together.

CE: Have you had to revisit?

KF: Absolutely!

CE: What do you do when only a few students are struggling with the subject?

KF: We are fortunate enough to have something called jump-start time here where it’s a remediation and enrichment block. So its thirty minutes a day and we can use that time to pull those few students who are struggling with something. Another thing we do is if we’ve gone to the lesson part and we’re doing something independently, I’ll take those kids who are struggling to the table and we’ll do a small group review of whatever the concept was that they were having a hard time with.             

CE: How often do you assign homework and how often to you typically assign?

KF: So we had a big debate about homework at the beginning of the year because there is all this research coming out that’s saying that homework isn’t effective and it’s a waste of time. My team mate felt very strongly that practicing math homework at home is really valuable, so we’ve revamped homework quite a bit. Three years ago we were giving homework every single night so it was a math review of whatever we did in class that day, everyday, and 20 minutes of reading. Then last year we went to where they got homework on a Monday it was turned back in on a Friday, and it was reviewing the concepts of the week. Then this year we’re reviewing the concepts previously taught so we’re sending something home on Monday its returned to school on Friday and its review of math concepts we taught the week before, so that way they’re not practiving a new skill but something we had a lot of time looking at, but its usually 10-15 math problems. It’s not a lot then their supposed to read 20 minutes every night. 

CE: What is your favorite activity to do in order to encourage student engagement?

KF: So I think it depends on what’s happening. If I notice that a lot of kids are kind of zoned out it might be “alright kids stand up” we’re gonna move around a bit, we’re gonna stretch, were gonna do whatever. We’ve done little ice-breaker things where we put on music and do the bus driver kind of thing so one person is the middle doing something, and the others behind them have to follow along. So some times we break it up like that, other times you know it’s moving along, and sometimes it just a few students so a gentle reminder of lets you know refocus our attention on what we’re doing. I have one kid who can’t stop moving all day long. so I grabbed him a wiggle stool so that he can move about in his seat.

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Documentation