Report Evidence #1 RICA Domain 2/ Competency 4

TC Name: Sahra Camberos
RICA Domain: Word Analysis
RICA Competency: Concepts about Print, Letter Recognition and the Alphabetic Principle 2.B.4
Grade Level: Kindergarten

INSTRUCTION:

 I observed my teacher educating her class about the importance of letter recognition. For the first three weeks of school my cooperating teacher has been doing a "letter of the day." This particular day the class focused on the letter D. The teacher first reads the class a book entitled, "My D Book." That provides visual representation of various items that young children can recognize that begin with the letter D. As she would pronounce a word that started with D, she would make sure she would clearly say the sound that D makes.

When she was done reading the book she asked the class if they could think of any words that started with D? She would then make the "duh" sound that D makes a couple of times so that the children could hear. She called on a few students to get their responses and if they responded with a word that did not start with D, she would tell them what letter it did start with and compare the sounds the letters made.

 Then using the "elmo" projector, the teacher would model what the children were expected to do on the D letter worksheet. This worksheet helps the children practice writing uppercase D's. There are 3 different size uppercase D's on the worksheet. The largest letter D's the teacher has the students go over in 3 crayons for each letter; this allows for more practice. The medium sized D's, the teacher demonstrated that the students had to fill in pencil. Then she modeled that the students would trace over the dotted small uppercase D's and in the bottom portion the students would write the uppercase D's free-hand.

The teacher would then pass out the worksheets and have the students go back to their desks to start working on them. As they would finish the teacher and myself would come around to check that the letter D's looked correct and that none were written way outside the lines or not touching the bottom/top of the line. If they had some letter D's that were not correct the students would fix them and then receive a star at the top of their paper.

INSTRUCTIONAL SETTING:

I observed that this classroom that there were many instances for visual support. For example, the teacher leaves the elmo projector on with her modeled worksheet visible for the students to reference to. She also has laminated ABC's, that border the front top wall of her room. She also has a letter tree right next the board that contains the letter the students are focusing on for the day, "D," along with a few pictures of words that begin with D; for instance, "dish," "dog," "doll."