Week 3 Managing Classrooms: Ch 3&4- Whole Group Meeting Areas & Furniture, Materials, and St

In the beginning of Chapter 3 for this text, it explains a scenario in which students are having trouble getting to the center meeting area because the passageways are too narrow and the children are bumping and falling into each other. The book explains that a solution for this would be to either create wider passageways or create 3 passageways. Both would require the desks to move further away which some classrooms cannot physically do with out the whole classroom feeling cramped. I think the best solution for this would to have students not come all at once. In my interning classroom, my CTs have the students come by either a wave (after one group desk gets to the carpet, another one goes) calling them by who is the quietest, by their numbers on their desks (each desk group is either a number 1-4), or by just boys and girls. There are certain ways to go around transition troubles with out changing the space of your room.

Chapter 3 went in depth about the importance of the 'group meeting area' which I refer to as just the carpet. It quotes, "The whole group meeting area is the heart of the learning environment, the place where the learning community is built and nourished." For me, carpet time is very important, especially for first graders. They like to fidget and get easily distracted at their desks, so breaking things up and allowing them to go on the carpet breaks things up. In the text, it talked about the importance of having the children sit in either a circle or an oval. This is an almost impossible task for my class since it is literally two classes combined. This would be ideal and the benefits of having everybody in a circle are many (equality, able to see everyone), but it just cannot be done with the volume of students we have in the classroom. Instead we have them sit in rows on the carpet. I see that my CT is more engaged with the students and is better able to keep track of her students when she is with them on the carpet even though it is not a circle. Too keep things fair, I would suggest maybe havingthe students who sit in the back of he class, sit in the front on the carpet so that they do not alwyas feel like they are being forgotten or not actively apart of what is going on in the classroom.

Next, chapter three explained the importance how the students sit and how the teacher sits on the carpet area. Students can sit on the floor with floor with pillows, sit in chairs such as beanbags, or sit on little box benches. I think theoretically this would be a good idea, but based upon prior experiences, I just see students fighting over beanbags and pillows. In my classroom we have these things for individual reading time but the beanbags and pillows are only designated for the group of students reading at that certain time. This is during centers or the "daily five" in which students are switching the activities they are engaged in. For the carpet time when the teacher is instrucing, I think that it is best to have the students all on the floor unless there is an equal amount of pillows/beanbags to go around for each child.

The last portion of chapter thrree talked about the display areas in the classroom. the three most important things to remember about displays is to have them at the student's eye level or below, for them to be simple and clear, and also display what is important. My students are in the first grade, so they are all fairly short. Although I understand the important of having things at eye level, I think it is more important to have displays that can be seen from far away as well. Not everyclassroom has a lot of space to display things at eye level. In my classroom, we have the student's job chart at eye level for them to refer back to since it changes weekly but the classroom schedule is higher on the wall since that does not change and is not used as much since they are used to their weekly routine.

Chapter 4 specified on the things that go in the classroom like furniture, materials, and storage. It explained that it is important to have a designated area for a quite place for students to read and do individual work, and also have small round tables for small group work. Offering a variety of work surfaces to accomodate for the different working styles is equally as important. Students like to work in different ways so setting up the classroom where students can lay on the carpet, sit in a rocking chair, or listen to soft music on headphones would be optimal. I also liked the idea of having cozy places such as huts or tents for the students to go into when they read. In my own 5th grade class, I remember having a sort of elevated area that we could climb into to read. That is something I would eventually want in a classroom. It separates your classroom from others and shows that it is set of for the students. Materials should include things that aid with music, dance, movement, art, crafts, drama, cooking, outdoor activities, field trips, and computers. When I first read this, I wondered how the authors of this textbook figured we could add that on top of the already demanding cirrculum. These were all things I participated in in elementary school to some degree but it was hard for me to see how the students in my interning class now were getting these wide variety of ways in which to express their expressive side. But as I reflected, I see that my students now are getting oppurtunities to do these things (aside from cooking). They have specials in which they go to p.e., art, and music, and they also have teacher p.e. which allows them too go outside or dance in the classroom. Even though things have tremendously changed from the time I was in the classroom, it just goes to show that students still need these activites in order to learn in all spectrums, not only through reading and math.