Final 3 Assignment

Part 1: Your Learning Environment & Learners

To begin with, I am interning in a 4th grade internship classroom that is made up of 18

students. Ten of the students are female and eight are male. The classes demographics are five

students are African American, seven are Hispanic, three are white, and three are Multiracial.

Five of the students are English language learners who speak Spanish, and all eighteen students

get free lunch. The teacher collaborated with the students on creating classroom rules and posted

it on the wall. The rules states, “We will raise our hand before speaking, we will keep our hands

to ourselves, and we will use kind words”. The classroom procedures are that the students push

their chairs in when they get up, they walk quietly to the line, and they make sure their area is

clean before leaving the classroom. The students use hand gestures to display signals to the

teacher. These hand gestures consist of if the students need to go to the bathroom, they hold up

two fingers, if they have to get a drink of water, they hold up three fingers. The teacher gets the

students attention by saying “class class” and the students respond with “yes yes” the students

then know that they need to give their attention to the teacher. The school I intern at is Oneco

Elementary school their rules are in the students pledge that they say every morning, “I promise

as an Oneco Elementary Cougar to always practice safety, respect each other, be responsible for

me, do my personal best every day, so that everyone will learn”. Oneco elementary school

mission is to advocate and provide a safe environment where families are inspired to achieve

success.

The 4th grade classroom is a large and spacious room for 9- and 10-year-old students. The

classroom has a wall of windows that bring in natural light. The classroom has a small group
table, students have desks that are in groups, there is a classroom library with comfy chairs, built

in counters with chairs, there are three standing desks where students can work, and the teacher

has two desks that are around the room. In the cabinets there are buckets of materials that are

labeled that the students can access if they ask first. The student’s desks are in groups and follow

Kagan seating. The students are grouped based on their level and how they can help each other

grow. There are six groups of desks around the room and five of the groups have four desks and

one group has five desks. At the front of the room there is a small group table with six chairs for

the students.

Majority of the students will be nine years old throughout the school year. There are a

couple students who will be 10 years old and one student who will be 11 years old. The

developmental needs between the 9-year old’s and the 11-year-old will be different. The 11-year-

old may not sit comfortably in the chairs or at the desk like the 9-year-old do. These students are

at that age where it is important socially for them to interact with peers of the same gender.

Fifteen of the students said that their favorite subject is math, three of the student’s said science,

and two of them said reading. A lot of the students said that they like to sing, dance, draw, go to

the beach, and play sports outside of school.

My internship classroom consists of varying needs. Seven of the students are receiving

Tier 2 Response to Intervention reading instruction where they are working on SRA,

pronouncing, and spelling words, and phonics. Six of the students are receiving Tier 3 Response

to Intervention reading instruction where they are working on all foundational skills. Five of the

students have unique social/emotional needs, there are supports in place for them like flexible

seating and the ability to talk to the school’s behavioral support specialist. One student has an

IEP and the accommodations that he has is that he has a FM device that connects to his hearing
aids and whoever is talking wears, hearing aids for school, extended time, and has someone to

read to him in person during testing.

The learning environment supports the needs of the students. One of the students that has

ADHD uses the standing desks so when he feels like he can’t sit anymore he can go to the

standing desks. He also sits at the small group table if he feels he will learn better at that table

then at his desk. The room is also very spacious, so it has a lot of room for 18 4th graders to move

around. The desks are arranged in groups so the students can collaborate with their peers. The

date and the daily schedule are posted on the board so the students can refer to it throughout the

day. Everything in the classroom is labeled so the students know where to find and put the

materials that they need. My CT has built a positive relationship with each student individually

and they show up eager to participate, learn, and interact with their peers.

Part 2: Philosophy of Management

My first teaching philosophy about creating an equitable classroom environment aligns

with Alfie Kohn who believes in collaborating with his students to develop a sense of

community. In the article Alfie Kohn’s Beyond Discipline, it states “He advises teachers to forget

all of the popular systems of discipline and work instead toward developing a sense of

community in their classes, where students feel safe and are continually brought into making

judgments, expressing their opinions, and working cooperatively toward solutions that affect

themselves and the class” (190). Teachers can develop a sense of community by behaving

respectfully towards the students, making connections among the students by having cooperative

learning and getting to know you activities, and by giving the students plenty of activities that

involves the whole class to collaborate. In the article Alfie Kohn’s Beyond Discipline, it gives
examples of collaborative class activities “producing a class mural, producing a class newsletter

or magazine, staging a verse choir performance, or doing some community service activity as a

class” (200). In my own classroom I will start the school year off by doing a lot of getting to

know you activities so the students can start building relationships with each other. I will also

start each morning off by doing a morning meeting where the whole class will participate. This is

a great way for the students to feel like they have a voice in the classroom, and that they belong.

By enacting in these routines, I expect the students to build close relationships with each other

and feel like they have a sense of belonging in the classroom.

My second teaching philosophy about creating an equitable classroom environment

aligns with Linda Albert who helps teachers meet students’ needs so that students will choose to

cooperate with the teacher and each other, she also believes in having parental support. Albert

also believes in working together as a class to establish a classroom code of conduct. In the

article Linda Albert’s Cooperative Discipline, it states “Albert strongly advises teachers to work

together with their class to establish a classroom code of conduct which specifies how everyone

is supposed to behave and interact, including the teacher” (76). In my own classroom I will

create a classroom code of conduct with my students by first asking them what they would like

our classroom to be. I would then send the parents a letter summarizing the ideas their children

have expressed and ask them for comments or suggestions. Once as a class we come up with

appropriate and inappropriate behaviors, “the students can write a letter to parents explaining the

code of conduct and listing the appropriate and inappropriate behaviors they have identified”

(Albert p.77). By enacting in the code of conduct I would expect my students to feel like they

have a sense of belonging in the classroom and that by coming up with the code of conduct they
will feel that it is fair and reasonable. I would also expect the parents to feel like they have a

voice in the classroom since they had a part in coming up with the code of conduct.

Part 3: Alignment between your Philosophy & Enactment

My actions in the learning environment impacted the learners in my classroom in a

positive way. For example, I made a leaving seat expectation anchor chart and went over each

expectation with the students. I read the first expectation “Raise your hand” and called on a

student to show me how to quietly raise their hand. When the student was finished, I asked the

class if they agree on how that student demonstrated that expectation and they all gave a thumbs

up. I then called on a different student to demonstrate how to push their chair in quietly. The

student demonstrated it appropriately and the class gave a thumbs up agreeing with the student’s

demonstration. I then did this with all five expectations. After the last expectation I had all the

students line up using the leaving seat expectations starting at number 2. This impacted the

student’s because a lot of the students were forgetting how to leave their seats respectfully and

quietly, so this helped reminding them of the expectations. Now if the students forget the

expectations, they can look at this anchor chart that is hanging on the wall. I adapted this for the

ELL students by adding pictures next to each expectation so they can use the pictures to guide

them.

My actions in the classroom impacted the students meeting the objectives set for them,

both socially and academically in a positive way. For example, when I facilitated a small group,

the students were working on using text evidence and quotations to answer the questions that

were aligned to their book. I started out by asking the students to tell me what the story they read

was about. When the students finished summarizing the questions, I explained to them that we
are going to be answering questions based on the book and are going to use our book to help us

find the answers. I had one student read the question aloud and then I asked them what page we

should turn to, to help us find the answer. When the students found the answer, I explained to

them that we need to restate the question before we write the answer down. On certain questions

the students had to quote sentences from the text and the students had trouble doing that, so I had

to explain what a quotation is and when and how we use it. When one of the students wasn’t

following directions after I went over it a couple of times, I had another student read to her what

she wrote to help her understand it a little better. By the end of the center the students were using

quotes correctly and automatically looking back in the text to find the answers.

My teaching philosophy is to collaborate with my students to develop a sense of

community to where they feel safe. I think I have done this in my classroom because I took the

time to make sure I built a positive relationship with each student. Every morning I make sure I

greet every student and to check in with them. I then make sure I talk to every student at least

one more time throughout the day to build that connection. I then facilitated a team building

activity as a class to help the students build relationships with each other. I put the students in

four groups of four and each student had a string that was tied to a rubber band. The students had

to communicate and work together to try and open the rubber band to pick the six cups up and

stack them. The students communicated well with each other letting there group no if someone

had to pull harder or loosen up. The students got so excited when they stacked all of their cups

and then they went and cheered on the other groups who were still trying. I think this activity

really helped the students because they were working together in a fun positive way.
 References

Oneco ES / homepage. Oneco ES / Homepage. (n.d.).

https://www.manateeschools.net/Domain/47

Charles, C. M., & Senter, G.W. (n.d). Building Classroom Discipline.

Charles, C. M. Linda Albert’s ‘Cooperative Discipline’. In Building Classroom Discipline.