I performed an observation in Mrs. Shirley’s resource room. Mrs. Shirley is a co-teacher and resource teacher at Tesnatee Gap Elementary. Mrs. Shirley began her day by helping another teacher by preparing her room for her because she would be coming to school late. Mrs. Shirley then returned to her room at 8:50 a.m. to prepare for her students to come to their math resource class.
Mrs. Shirley greeted her students as they entered the room. The students went to the carpet, sat down, and patiently waited for instruction. One child was crying, so Mrs. Shirley asked the lady that brought the children what was wrong with him. The lady informed Mrs. Shirley that he was upset because he missed his mother. The child had been out the Friday before; therefore, he was off his routine. Mrs. Shirley comforted the student telling him that he would be able to go home soon and that he was okay. The child continued to cry; however, when Mrs. Shirley asked him to …show more content…
Shirley started the class period by splitting the class of four boys into two groups of two. One group went around the room looking for number line cards that had a number missing from the number line. The students were instructed to take a worksheet around and fill in the number that was missing on the number line into the appropriate box on the worksheet. The other group was at Mrs. Shirley’s desk working on their hundreds chart. With the first group, she asked lower level questions which included: which number has a 3 in the tens place and a 2 in the ones place, which number is one more than 12, which number is one less than 36, which number is 10 more than 20, or which one is 10 less than 36. The second group she gave higher level questions such as: which number is 20 more than 15, which number is 15 more than 36, which number is 17 less than 32, or which number is 25 less than 46. Mrs. Shirley also wrote out mathematical sentences with the second group and explained how to regroup a mathematical