Blog 3- Bullying in the classroom

On January 16, the KC class had done their Guided Readings, doing partner readings of their "Just Right books". My Amy had me work with O, and A, two struggling readers. They have difficulty in reading, writing, and mathematics. For their Guided Readings, O and A were reading a small book, with 3 letter words. They told me to show them small cards with different three lettered words that are in the book, and they would tell me the word they said. Both did this by sounding out each letter sound, and then putting them together. "A" appeared to be more comfortable with the exercise, and was pronouncing every letter quickly while pointing to them. That being said, she didn't point with one to one correspondence, and seemed to recognize the letters. A does this with a number of her books, and it seems that she memorized the books after working on them repeatedly with a teacher.

O started out comfortably, but began to struggle later on, particularly when it came to decoding the letters. She was able to say individual letter sounds, but connecting them to make words was a problem. What made it worse though, was A's impatience, and pressure her to "say it faster", before then sounding out the word on her own louder than A. This occurred against when they read the book, with A getting annoyed at waiting, and half yelled over O's voice, and almost yelling at O. It kept happening to the point where O completely shut down, and refused to make eye contact, or talk until after guided reading had ended. I had done Guided Reading with O before, one on one, and she had never shut down like that before with me.

My first method of addressing the behavior was telling O to take her time, and take as much time as she needs. I told A that sometimes we need extra time, and we shouldn't rush people. While that helped for a moment, O continued with being pushy. "Why are you doing it so slow? Look at me do it", then she would read the words over O. I then used their teacher, Amy's words and asked, "Is that a kind thing to do? Is it kind to rush people and make fun of people?", and A said no, but she kept going later on.

I found out that A's siblings went to PS 527, and were at the top of, and ahead of most of their Kindergarten class. I feel A has a lot of pressure to be like her sisters, and based on anecdotes I've heard from other teachers, her parents believe she should be doing as well as her sisters. Since she usually needs help when it comes to doing work in class, I feel A looks for others that are struggling like her, and belittles them to boost herself. I spoke with Amy about this, and I recommended splitting them from one another during guided reading. Have O work with others during partner reading, and the same for A. Their pairing together was done because of their reading ability, but it isn't supportive for O in the least.