Prompt # 6
My experience in a first grade classroom continues as before. The children are getting to know me, just by my presence, not because we have much interaction. I have noticed that much of the students' written work is phonetic. The teacher has a policy of not spelling any words for them, they must spell it phonetically if they do not know the correct spelling. It seems to me that this is very good practice for sound symbol relationship, but might reinforce bad spelling if this method is practiced for too long, but maybe for ESL students this is best. I have noticed  one boy, who has was off task for quite a while. He appears to have special needs. He was peeling the paper off of crayons and playing instead of doing the writing assignment. Since I was monitoring the group, I attempted to get him back on task, but with no success. When the teacher was done with her reading group, she had him come sit by her. She worked with him one on one, with some success as far as I could tell from a distance. Again, the angry tone of the teacher was disturbing. I felt that clearly this boy was not up to par with his work, nor was he on task, but an angry tone did not seem appropriate. It seems that she could have had him come sit next to her without singling him out quite as noticeably. Many of the students are Spanish speaking, but most of them seem up to par with their English. It is difficult for me to tell if there are big gaps in achievement at this point. The students are all doing the same writing assignments. Reading group may be at different levels.My impression over all is that more sensitivity could be going on toward the students in general and probably also in regard to their backgrounds. The students generally get along and appear to interact well. Occasionally the teacher will have to separate two of them because they are fooling around, not because of conflicts. 
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