As is the nature and intentional trajecotry of this MAT program, my responsibilities in the classroom started off very minimal and increased gradually over time until I was the main classroom teacher. Below I outline where my responsibilities began and how they increased over time.

Observer /// At the very beginning of the year, my role was primarily observer. I was getting to know the way Mrs. Quillen ran her classroom, the students in my class, and their skills and challenges. This was a crucial period to my development as a teacher to observe the way an expert teacher starts off the year and knows the developmental age of second graders. 

Literacy /// My first teaching roles were in literacy. The Worcester Public School System uses a literacy curriculum called Fountas and Pinnell which includes two types of read aloud, their related reading minilessons, and phonics word study work. I first started out by doing the Interactive Read Aloud (IRA). Fountas and Pinnell splits their IRA books into groups of 4-6 related books around different topics of study. At the beginning of the year, these topics were around friendship, creating family, and including everyone no matter their background. These topics were imperative to setting a community of care and friendship.

Around this time I also started leading morning meeting. At the beginning of the year this consisted of doing an activity and reading the morning message, although as I got used to it, there wasn’t as much consistency. As I started taking over as a full-time teacher towards the end of the year, I created a morning meeting ritual involving a morning meeting leader who would read the message, pick from a variety of games I have created on index cards, and told me the attendance based on the popsicle sticks they would place in a certain bag for school lunch or home lunch. 

 Math /// As the year progressed, I started co-teaching math with Mrs. Quillen. Worcester Public Schools follow a pre-created curriculum called EnVisions which has a kindergarten through sixth grade curriculum. Because of that, there was little choice in what I taught. Scatterred between the worksheets of EnVisions, I planned minilessons to hone in on certain skills I saw that were not being hit in the textbook, or that certain students needed extra practice in. 

Writing /// Finally, 

Social Studies and Science 

started off more as observer, then slowly took over

first, literacy: morning meeting and IRA

Then started taking over SR too

Then started doing math more together; splitting the room or just doing together 

then writing

did 3 major CUPs throughout the year which were social studies related