Classroom Observation Paper

In my practicum assignment I was able to observe at the Alamo Elementary School in Alamo, Tennessee, which was in a rural setting. I observed Mrs. Anna Pope’s fifth grade class for eight of my practicum hours. Mrs. Pope would teach her homeroom class reading and social studies, then they would switch halfway through the day and she would teach the same lessons to Mrs. Lilly’s class. Mrs. Pope’s first group of students had sixteen girls and eight boys, and her second group of students had fourteen girls, and ten boys. Through observing Mrs. Anna’s fifth grade classes I was able to see overt routines to gain or sustain students’ attention, teacher modeling or explicit step by step directions, classroom climate regarding risk or challenge, and

My goal is to be a teacher who is student-oriented. Always looking at what the students’ needs are, using theories and my knowledge of education to best implement this in my classroom. Zone of Proximal Development is a tool I can use to tie my observations together. I can use Zone of Proximal Development to scaffold my students because as a teacher I will start helping them to complete and understand assignment by me walking through those with them. Then overtime the students would learn how to do these on their own, needing little to no help from me. This also instills self-efficacy in my students because they are being held responsible to complete the task that are being given to them. Finally, the students are challenged to the intrinsically motivated because through scaffolding and teacher modeling I would be giving the a better understanding of what it looks like to be successful so that they would then feel confident in finding this same success on their own. For me teaching is going to be about setting my students up for success and being confident to be successful in other classes and throughout their