Working in the Classroom

As you know, I am in a 3rd grade classroom in Bulloch County. As one of my assignments for my college class, I had to do a Read Aloud to my class. A Read Aloud is where I, the Curriculum student, picks a book to read to the classroom, have it approved by my clinical supervisor, and read it to the class as well ask the students follow-up questions. The clinical teacher will grade me on the Read Aloud. I will not see the grade that I received on it since the teacher sends it to my professor at the end of the semester. I completed my Read Aloud a few days ago. I tried to choose a book that was 3rd grade appropriate. This is a tough age to choose a book for because they are not quite into the chapter books and they are too big for the baby books. So I chose “Huge Harold” by Bill Peet. I’ll admit that I was very nervous as Mrs. Rollins called me to the front of the classroom to begin my read aloud. However, I had to do it so I took a deep breath and began. I was told beforehand that the students have discussed the author that I chose before and that they would be familiar with him. As I asked the students who had heard of him, they all raised their hands and volunteered information that they knew about him. It was going great so far and I had warmed up to the students and was comfortable once I got started. Before I began reading, I asked the students to look for “awesome” adjectives, “vivid” verbs, and contractions throughout the story. This, I thought, was a good way to keep them focused during the story. Since they have been studying adjectives, verbs, and contractions, I thought this would be the perfect book since it contained such a large variety of each. As I began reading the story, the students laughed at the scenes in the book. While reading the story, I maintained their attention by asking them what they predicted would happen next to. Some said that Harold, the rabbit, would be caught by the farmer while others said that he wouldn’t be. All of the students were eager to answer and seemed to be really interested in the book. As I got half-way through the book, I reminded the students to be looking out for adjectives, verbs and contractions. As I finished the book, I asked some follow-up questions. Firstly, I called on students to tell me what verbs were, were adjectives were and what contractions were. The first question that I asked the students was to name some of the adjectives that they saw in the book and what it was describing. Hands shot up all around the room. Mrs. Rollins even raised her hand to answer a question. That made me feel a little more comfortable to know that she was involved in it as well. The next question that I asked the class was to name some verbs that they spotted in the book. They named a few but not many. When I asked them to identify some contractions, they all answered. I walked around the room and flipped pages so that they could recognize the contractions on the paper. They all did well with it. When I finished the book, Mrs. Rollins told me that I did very well. She even asked me to read it to her second Reading/Language Arts group. That made me feel confident in my work. I felt as if I met the requirements. I can now relax since I have completed a task that I first thought was terrifying.