Teacher Rounds by Del Prete Thomas A.;

Author:Del Prete, Thomas A.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1994725
Publisher: Corwin Press
Published: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

4

Sharing and Developing Expertise in Elementary School

The Teacher Round protocol can be applied equally well regardless of grade or school level or curriculum. This chapter illustrates Teacher Round learning at the elementary level. It begins with a detailed presentation of a Teacher Round focused on early guided reading in a 2nd grade classroom. The remainder of the chapter centers on the experience of two teachers and exemplifies one way in which a school can use Teacher Rounds to anchor its effort to build and sustain effective practice. These examples demonstrate the learning that is possible, for both teachers and students, when there is a safe space, openness, and courage to learn.

Margaret’s Teacher Round: Early Guided Reading (Grade 2)

Overview

Margaret is the literacy coach for Woodland Academy, a K–6 school. Her Teacher Round occurs in a 2nd grade classroom. It is September and students are still adjusting to the school year, many also to a return to daily reading. The majority of students in the school are nonnative English speakers. Almost all qualify for the federal free or reduced lunch program.

Margaret works with six students, four boys and two girls, at a crescent moon-shaped desk. The students are developing readers at an early stage, spanning the D-I levels on the scale used by Fountas and Pinnell. Margaret has some information about the students’ needs as young readers but little about their interests and personalities. As she points out in her Round sheet, she feels her lack of knowledge will limit the extent to which she can be “authentic” in the lesson: the students “are complex individuals. They are not just their reading level!” She would rather draw on a greater understanding of what these students think, feel, and need in her effort to support their development as readers. Nevertheless, she is intent on supporting them in the lesson and in implementing the guided reading process.

Guided reading places explicit emphasis on a teacher’s ability to frame, attend to, and scaffold a student’s effort to learn. Margaret’s lesson sets this process in high relief for the Round group: participants will have an opportunity to observe closely how and how well different students go about comprehending and thinking about the text and how Margaret goes about understanding and supporting students’ meaning-making and development as readers.

Margaret introduces students to a new nonfiction book, The Fantastic Flying Squirrel. The book is at the I reading level. It should be accessible to all students but will be more challenging for some than others.

Round Partners

The Round group is a mix of several teachers and instructional aides at the school, including the new 2nd grade classroom teacher and an English as Second Language (ESL) teacher, and several teacher interns. The teacher interns are accompanied by their university mentor.

Preround Orientation

Margaret reviews the early guided reading lesson plan that she prepared. She points out the prompts for early readers that she will use, which she has listed on the plan, to help students as needed in their effort to comprehend the text:

Figure 4.

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