Math, Reading, Collaboration, Independence: One Morning In A First-Grade Classroom

by Maya McFadden

First grader Dallas celebrates being one of the first to finish her reading assignment.

Nathan Hale first grader Januel held out eight fingers, then carefully counted three down. With five fingers remaining, he picked up his pencil and wrote that answer on the math worksheet in front of him.

That was the scene on a recent Wednesday morning in the first-grade classroom of Nathan Hale teacher Briana Amodio. It was around 9:30 a.m. when Januel and his classmates put their addition and subtraction skills to the test.

“If there are eight frogs and three hop away, how many are left?” read one of the questions on a math packet before the students.

While Amodio passed out worksheets to the class, veteran paraprofessional Denise Cusack asked the class whether the frogs hopping away meant they should add or subtract. Around the room, students used their fingers to work through similar problems, including one asking how many children would be at a park if one more joined a group of seven.

For the second year in a row, Amodio is working with Cusack in their classroom of around 25 students at the Morris Cove PreK-8 school.

Throughout the morning students mirrored the collaboration and independence both Amodio and Cusack displayed while moving between their respective responsibilities. Their collaboration helped make room for the students’ own independence to grow through small tasks like helping their classmates and transitioning between activities without assistance in the first month of the school year.

As the students finished their worksheets, Amodio and Cusack checked their work before the class moved on to 10 minutes of math practice on their tablets.

Januel tapped 17 dots on his screen, one by one, quietly counting each one aloud before correctly answering another math question.

Wednesday morning offered those glimpses into the daily routines taking shape in Amodio’s first-grade classroom during the first weeks of school. Amodio balanced the multitasking that comes with teaching while her classroom partner Cusack seamlessly filled in with instruction for the class, making sure a beat wasn’t missed throughout the day.

Their partnership was on display when it was time for the students’ beginning-of-year reading assessments. As Amodio brought students into the hallway one at a time to assess their reading skills at the start of the year, Cusack gathered the rest of the class on the rug and continued their morning lessons.

“We talk every morning so we’re always on the same page,” Cusack told this reporter before next heading to a third-grade classroom in need of additional support.

Cusack joined the students on the class rug while Amodio facilitated assessments. On the rug Cusack said sentences aloud to the students then asked them to count how many words each sentence had. She wasn’t able to stump her students when she said the sentence “sunflowers are pretty and yellow” aloud.

“How do you know there’s only five words there?” she asked.

One student explained that “sunflower” is one word not two.

Next, Cusack used Heggerty’s phonemic awareness curriculum book for the students’ daily reading challenge. The phonemic practice came just before students moved into the day’s reading lesson.

For several words Cusack called out words like “shock” then asked students to replace the “sh” sound with a “kn.” After repeating the word “shock” aloud with Cusack the students next called out the new word “knock.”

For the day’s reading lesson students completed two workbook pages in their Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) Know It, Show It books. The two pages tasked students with practicing their past and present word tenses.

The students filled in word blanks for sentences like “dad (rest or rested) in a chair.”

After completing their workbook pages the students spent ten minutes independently reading.

Amodio continued individual assessments outside the classroom allowing for Cusack to guide the class next through math practice, keeping the morning’s lessons moving.

At around 10 a.m. the class spent 10 minutes on iReady math, polishing the math skills they had just practiced in their workbooks.

Briana Amodio checks students’ math tests.