Cherokee Charter Academy Charter School - 918 Words

I observed for fifteen hours at Cherokee Charter Academy. Cherokee Charter Academy is a charter school in Cherokee County on Sixes Road. Cherokee Charter Academy includes kindergarten through eighth-grade classes. There are over nine hundred students and about sixty-five full-time teachers at Cherokee Charter Academy. Charter schools are similar to public schools and are tuition-free. Charter schools are governed independently, but if the school does not demonstrate success it will lose its charter. At Cherokee Charter Academy I observed the kindergarten classroom of Ms. Dunlap. Ms. Dunlap has been a kindergarten teacher for ten years. In this classroom, I observed the students, the instruction, standards, and the teacher. As I observed†¦show more content†¦Next, I observed the standards, differentiated instruction, and the phonemic and phonics lessons in the class. The essential questions and standards are listed in the front of the classroom but are never referred to. I think that differentiation is a big part of this class, especially because of the number of students with individualized education plans. During lessons, the entire class will meet around the rug for instructions and introductions. After the class is given instructions, most students will work independently and there will be one or two groups that work with Ms. Dunlap or her teacher’s aide for guided practice. The majority of the lessons include hands-on activities, such as cutting examples of noun and verbs out of a magazine, using blocks to measure student’s heights, and songs that emphasize parts of speech. While I observed I also saw some phonemic awareness lessons. These are lessons that focus on individu al sounds of letters and the structure of the words and letters. I think that this class had a wide variety of reading levels. Some students did very well, but others could not write their names yet. The class met on the rug for phonemic lessons, and Ms. Dunlap would use a book that had tons of activities. The book includes different activities that make students find the sounds in words, substitute sounds to make new words, blend sounds to form words, and to take apart words to find the sounds. Ms. Dunlap