Field Experience

Michelle Quibuyen

Education in the U.S. – ITL 602

 Abstract

This paper discusses the different teaching strategies I learned about by both observing

Mrs. Fanucchi in her kindergarten class, as well as the interview with Mrs. Fanucchi after the

observation. One idea I was able to take away from Mrs. Fanucchi was that she focuses on

getting to know her students on a personal level, but she also tries to make connections with all

her students. This paper also discusses how technology plays a big role in Mrs. Fanucchi’s

classroom. This observation was tremendously important to me in understanding and gaining

information about classroom management and practices that help Mrs. Fanucchi to inspire,

motivate and instruct her students. As a future educator, I will be taking what I have learned

about observing this classroom and try to implement some practices into my future classroom.
Description of the Classroom and the Lesson Observed During Visit

The classroom I chose to observe was a kindergarten classroom at Shirley Lane

Elementary School, a PreK-6 school in Bakersfield, CA. The city of Bakersfield has many

schools that are considered to be Title 1 and Shirley Lane Elementary School is one of them.

According to Shirley Lane Elementary School’s SARC Report, the school has a large

socioeconomically disadvantaged population which is made up of 90.2% of the population. The

school also has a large Hispanic or Latino population, with those students accounting for 87.9%

of total enrollment. The percentage of English learners is 42.3%, which is fairly high. Mrs.

Fanucchi’s student to teacher ratio is 23:1, with the total enrollment of kindergarten students

being at 114.

I have personally known Mrs. Fanucchi, for five years as a colleague and have admired

her as a teacher, so I was very excited and eager to spend the day in her classroom observing her

interaction with the students, as well as her lessons. Although Mrs. Fanucchi has only been

teaching for three years, she takes great pride in her students and her classroom and sets high

expectations for every student who enters. Her classroom is filled with bright colors and is

organized very neatly. She has covered every inch of her walls with student projects and

assignments.

I observed Mrs. Fanucchi’s class on Wednesday and every morning she greets her

students at the door and notifies her students that they will be starting on the carpet, like any

other day. She starts the lesson with phonics and then goes right into syllables. Mrs. Fanucchi

creatively thinks of words as the students figure out how many syllables are in that word. After

she reviews the syllables, she quickly reviews old phonic lessons the students have previously

learned and makes a game out of it. She uses her interactive document camera to flash their sight
words on the projector screen as all the students read the word. At around 8:15 a.m., her ELL

students leave the classroom to go to intervention. The rest of the students then have an overview

of all their sight words starting from September up until April. She does this using flash cards,

and while doing so, she keeps eye contact with the group of students to see if the students are

participating. If the students are not participating, she keeps the word on the screen as they break

down the word using the different strategies they have learned, i.e. breaking the words apart,

sounding each letter, etc. Through the sight word review, students first spelled it the words on

their own and the students were able to ask their Amazon Echo Plus, Alexa, how to spell the

specific word while they looked over their own spelling. After her phonics lesson, the students

grabbed their iPad and started to work on Lexia, an online program that focuses on elementary

literacy instruction. As the students worked on Lexia, Mrs. Fanucchi walked around her

classroom and helped students who were having trouble with their levels. The students worked

on Lexia for about thirty minutes.

After her students were finished with Lexia, her students that left for intervention came

back to the classroom and all her students sat back on the carpet. She read a story to her students

and explained that it went along with the other story they read the other day. On Wednesdays,

the students usually write about the book that Mrs. Fanucchi just read, but since it was

Administrative Assistant Day, she decided to have the students write a letter to the school

administrative assistants to show their appreciation. In order to show what school secretaries do,

she played a video on YouTube that showed an example. After the students watched the video,

the students started on their letter to their secretaries as Mrs. Fanucchi kept an eye out on her

watch to make sure she was on schedule.

 After recess, the students came back to their seats and tried to finish their work. While the

students finished their phonics worksheet and letter, Mrs. Fanucchi differentiated her instruction

and called different reading groups to read with her. Mrs. Fanucchi’s aide came in at around

10:15 A.M., and also instructed a reading group. There are four stages they complete in a reading

group. First, the students and the instructor read together. Second, the reader and instructor read

again, but look and stop at words the students do not understand. Third, students read to each

other and fourth, one student reads to the instructor and classmate, while others listen. As Mrs.

Fanucchi continued her reading groups, she would look up every now and then to see if her

students were staying on task and checked on her students’ behavior. During this time, her

students worked independently, and if students needed help, other students were there to guide

them.

After lunch, students walked back in and went straight to the carpet to cool down. Mrs.

Fanucchi gave them one minute to relax and quickly after, they start with talking about the

calendar and sang songs about the days of the week and the months of the year. Afterwards, they

started working on math problems. The students were working on subtraction and addition.

Students grabbed their white boards and Mrs. Fanucchi put up problems on the white board one

by one for the students to solve. She chose a mini teacher to go up to the board and solved the

problem. After solving the problem on the board, another student went up to their Amazon Echo

Plus and asked Alexa what the answer was – for example, “Alexa, what is eight minus two?”.

Following this strategy, the students went back to their seats and Mrs. Fanucchi vocalized a

problem without the students seeing the number, just hearing it. Students then completed the

problem on their white board and held it up for Mrs. Fanucchi to see. Quickly after doing so, the

students took out their math workbook and complete the assigned page. Mrs. Fanucchi walked
around to see if any of her students were struggling and if they were she always told them, “I

know you could do it! I believe in you!”

Towards the end of the day, Mrs. Fanucchi let her students finish the letters and drawings

to the secretaries. She ended up taking her students to the office to deliver their letters and after

they came back, the students sat back down on the carpet. Mrs. Fanucchi then told them how

proud she was of them and pointed out great behavior and also listed the great behavior they

accomplished that day.

Teacher Interview

1. How do you think your class went? What do you think worked well? And what do you

think you can improve for your next lesson?

a. Perfecto – went according to plan except I didn’t get to do my whole group

reading. The students reading groups, they were participating and saw growth

and students worked independently.

2. What do you think your strengths are? And how can you build on your strengths?

a. Setting expectations for my students – having more positive reinforcement

3. Did you let the students struggle with difficult questions? Or did you step in and lead

them to the answer? Why?

a. No difficult questions for them. One difficult questions – think of a topic sentence.

Wanted them to come up with their own.

4. What did you learn from teaching the class?

a. Learned that differentiated reading groups are improving and strategies that are

being implemented are working

5. What is your definition of diversity? How do you encourage your students to honor and

respect the uniqueness of each individual?

a. I don’t believe in diversity all my kids are the same. It’s cool because you get a lot

of culture and diversity in your classroom and incorporate them in your lessons.

Want them to have respect about different cultures and diversity. Celebrate

students’ cultural backgrounds and promote them by teaching students.

6. What is your model of success and how do you fit it into your classroom?

a. “Don’t give up!” You work for your success. They know what practice and review

is. Students know to work harder.

7. Describe how you would work to create a learning environment that is welcoming and

increasingly diverse.

a. Lesson plans, incorporate students’ background with parents’ permission.

Celebrate everybody’s background. Celebrate all tradition and become respectful

human beings. Learning different sensibilities. Students have different

assignments, but students respect and understand that.

8. How do you seek opportunities to improve your learning environment to meet the needs

of all students?

a. Workshops, phonics workshops, induction provides with support, principal makes

dibel meetings, grade level meetings, collaboration on Mondays, amazing support

system with kindergarten team, learning from different educators

9. How has diversity and culture played a role in shaping your teaching style?

a. Learning to accept everybody, made a family culture in my classroom. Talk about

family – different but the same. Tells students she loves them and that she cares
 about them. Diversity plays a role, they learn to respect – we all have the same

heart regardless of skin color

10. Were you ever placed on a team where you or someone on that team did not see eye-to-

eye? If so, how did you resolve it?

a. Still carry the situation as a professional – just talk about students. Keep it

professional, keep it clean.

11. Please tell us about an experience that you had with a student. What did you learn about

yourself?

a. Routine based classroom – student comes from a background that not all student

can be treated equally but you need to give the students what they need. Some

students do not respond well to consequences, discussion with students about

patience and their heart

12. Have you ever had to utilize your multicultural skills to solve a problem? If so, how?

a. Yes, students who do not speak English – I can relate. ELD learners exactly what

they need because I’m an ELD learner. Use a lot of visuals, some students do not

know the vocabulary.

What I learned from the Observation and Interview

Through my observation and interview, I have learned that Mrs. Fanucchi continuously

tries to inspire and motivate all her students. Mrs. Fanucchi was able to accomplish much

without an aide and has personalized her teaching strategies to meet the needs of all her students.

Mrs. Fanucchi’s constant communication with parents, grandparents or guardians help her to

incorporate methods into her every day teaching. I realized that Mrs. Fanucchi does not
discriminate or have any biases towards her students. She absolutely gives her students equal

opportunity and gives “everyone an equal chance to receive an education” (Spring, 116). In

giving everyone an equal opportunity in her classroom, Mrs. Fanucchi does not show any

favoritism towards her students. She randomly picks names by choosing a stick, or has students

pick out the names from the cup. She allows everyone an opportunity to be the “mini teacher”

and asks students if they have already been chosen that day or not to see give everyone the same

opportunity.

I also observed how dependent Mrs. Fanucchi is on technology and how this motivates

her students. She uses her interactive document camera every single day and also uses her Echo

Plus to provide the correct answer and set timers. The students also use their iPads to complete

the Lexia program and she uses her watch to keep track of time. Students love using the

technology especially when it came to go up to ask Alexa the problem or simply asking Alexa to

put a timer on.

Her positive reinforcement in her classroom also helped her to succeed and I have also

learned that from this experience. Allowing the students to know that it is okay to make mistakes

and tells them that if they make mistakes it is okay, we can also start over and fix it. Mrs.

Fanucchi always tells her students that she believes in them and that she knows that they can do

it, and this is something I would love to incorporate in my future classroom.

Through my interview, I have learned how to incorporate different cultural backgrounds

into my lesson. Mrs. Fanucchi explained that although she treats her students equally, she

emphasizes different cultural backgrounds in her classroom and celebrates each and every single

one of their differences. She wants to allow students to grow and respect the different cultures

and diversity in her classroom. She makes sure the students demonstrate ‘self-awareness,
confidence, family pride and positive social identities” (Spring, 189) in her classroom. She

promotes diversity in her classroom even if there are many Hispanic or Latino students in her

class. She wants students to “recognize the diversity of people in the world” (Spring, 190).

Learning these different strategies and methods from Mrs. Fanucchi has definitely helped me to

grow into a professional and successful educator.

 References

Spring, J. H. (2016). American education (17th ed.). New York: Routledge.