Alicia Govannicci 2ND Letter to Teacher Dear Mrs.

Mulshine, I have really enjoyed teaching and working with the first graders. I am learning a lot from both them and you. I have learned abundance about classroom management from the way you run your classroom and your lessons. I especially like when you say one two three eyes on me and the students respond one two eyes on you. Ive noticed it helps them become engaged and focused on you. Observing you conduct running records on the students really helped me in getting the most out of conducting my first running record. When your students do word study, I have become aware that the word sorts I see them doing have been word sorts that have been suggested to me for use from my texts. I have recently been learning about the reading workshop and I see several things that I have learned about being used currently in your classroom. Some of these things include, making predictions, using the bookmark technique, making self-to-text connections, and several others. Author Linda Chen describes the structure of the reading workshop to consist of a minilesson, independent reading time with conferring, partner talk time and conferring, and whole-group share. Every class I have seen this structure successfully put to action in your classroom. It usually starts with you giving a minilesson on the rug, then sending the students back to their tables for independent reading and partner talk time, and then ends with

whole-group discussion back on the rug. Patricia Cunningham, another author, whose book about phonics I have recently read, has written about the variety of writing that should be seen and accepted in the classroom. In your first grade classroom, the students communicate through writing, not only using words, but by using pictures, drawings, scribbles, letters, etc. These are all a part of the various ways a child writes and communicates that Cunningham describes. All of the feedback you have given me from the lessons I have taught so far has really helped me to learn where my strengths and weaknesses are as a teacher. I hope to adapt many of your teaching methods into my own classroom one day. Sincerely, Alicia Govannicci