Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following passage.
I have come for a visit to an elementary classroom for six- to nine-year-olds. My strongest impression of this classroom is the purposefulness of the children in their cooperative efforts.
As I settle in to observe for the morning, I begin to sense that, for these children, relating to each other and working are a unified (—致的）experience.
The children’s voices are low, and I can only overhear (偶尔听到）the directed conversation of the children at the table closest to me. I realize that the way the children use their voices contributes to the atmosphere of respect and purposefulness in this elementary classroom.
I hear one of the four boys next to me announce “200-pound explosive shells.” He is pointing to a picture in one of the opened books on the table in front of him. “Did anything blow up?” one of the boys asks. All the boys look over at the opened book. Two of the four boys are taking notes. A third one is a complicated pencil drawing from an illustration of a particular model of train. The fourth boy is using graph paper (方格纸）to compute a math problem.
A few feet away from me, three children are sticking pins into holes on a poster board map of Europe. The pins have tiny red labels attached with the names of countries on them.
“Albania”，I overhear one boy say as he reads a label to his working partners and puts it on the map.
Just beyond these children, five others have newspapers spread over a large table. One of the children walks over to the assistant, carrying what looks to me to be the sports section of one of the newspapers. These children must be following basketball scores or related sports statistics.
The only other table on which I can see the work clearly is next to this “newspaper”table.This is a small table with only two children. Their books are standing up on end so that I can see, even across the room, that they are doing a report on jungle birds and animals.
Such is an elementary class! The children are well-occupied, learning,concentrated,interested, and purposeful. Every subject area but music is covered. This classroom different from my own elementary schooling. I want to know how this particular teacher helps to facilitate this outcome with this particular group of children.
1. What strongly impresses the author in the elementary classroom?
