Introduction
This report will contain the observations and discoveries I made during the four hours I spent observing Ms. Puruis 6th grade class and Ms. Myers 7th grade class of Corrigan-Camden Junior High School. It should cover classroom management, teaching style, classroom organization, interventions, and any other notable findings. I will start off by describing what happened during my observation and then conclude with reflections about my time spent in the class.
During the Observation Upon arriving at the school, I am directed to Ms. Puruis’s 6th grade English class. The desks are arranged in about 7 neat rows, there is a large whiteboard in front of the desks with assignments written on it. In the back corner is the teacher’s desk and a few computer stations. In the other corner there are storage closets with supplies. There are 10 students, all sitting at their desks waiting for class to start. Ms. Puruis informs the students that I will be sitting in on the class, and she begins the lesson. Previously they read a passage about “how pineapples are grown” and they were to take a quiz over it. She informed the students that she would be taking two separate grades on the assignment, one over their answers and
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Myers. She has them draw up the body systems, and throughout the class, she talks to the students while they work. Nothing eventful happens, until lunch time. Ms. Myers has to leave, I tell her that I would like to watch the students at lunch. I head to the cafeteria, and sit next to this teacher. She tells me about one student who seems to never talk and only has one friend. I am reminded of myself, when i was younger and tell the teacher this. She seemed a bit worried but after telling her that I was similar at that age and I eventually grew out of it, she felt somewhat relieved. Most of the students are relatively well behaved during this time, although a few do get in trouble for walking
Marzano, R. J., & Brown, J. L. (2009). A handbook for the art and science of teaching. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
I visited Mrs. Cable’s kindergarten classroom at Conewago elementary school one afternoon and observed a math lesson. Mrs. Cable had an attention-grabbing lesson and did many great things in the thirty minutes I observed her. I have my own personal preferences, just like every teacher, and I do have a few things I would do differently. There are also many ways this observation can be related to the material discussed in First Year Seminar.
As a teacher in training, I have very limited in-classroom experience and depend heavily on the expertise of professors as well as a variety of books and articles published on education. I am convinced that a learner centered approach to instruction is of fundamental importance and that it will inform most teaching decisions I will need to make to become an effective educator. Knowing as much about the students before school even begins will help structure the content material and guide the instruction methods. Along with this, knowing what the school provides in terms of environment and materials will help formulate a plan to give students every possible opportunity for achievement and success. Wong (2005) defines classroom management as “all of the things that a teacher does to organize students, space, time and materials so that student learning can take place” (p. 84).
I walk past the secretaries’ desks and I can feel their eyes shaming me. As I approach the principal’s office, I hear his gruff voice through the doorway. “Well, I apologize for this inconvenience, Miss Taylor. You are free to return to class.”
“Educational practice is necessarily based on the assumption that students are willing to engage in educational activities that they will lend their cooperation and support to the process in their education. Students who do not offer such cooperation, who are unmotivated, present significant challenges” (Williams and Ivey, 2001, 75). High school school-children show the most trouble with cooperation and motivation; they only have a few more years of schooling and for some pupils that is the end of their education. That was one of the main reasons why I wanted to observe a high school classroom; the other main reason is because I have actually considered teaching high school grades. I observed Ms. Edith Stone and her Algebra II mathematics classroom.
When I walked into the school, I was greeted by the receptionist who kindly showed me where to sign in and then directed me to the teacher I would be observing for the day. The staff was dressed very appropriate for the day and on Friday they were able to wear pink because it was October. Although I did not see much interaction with factuality with each other, I was able to witness when the teachers of a certain grade would come to pick up their students. I saw how the teachers interacted with Mrs. Lee and they were very respectful. The student’s behavior varied from class to class. Most of the classes were well behaved with only a few students causing disruption. Mrs. Lee had warned me that the kindergarten class is normally noisier than other classes, but to her surprise the students were very quiet and did their work independently with no interruptions. Mrs. Lee did a wonderful job at keeping the students disciplined within the classroom. She would give positive re-enforcement and correct students when they would do something incorrectly. She worked really well with the students and they students responded in a respectful manner to Mrs.
Mrs. Gerard has a wonderful and bright kindergarten class. The students are all unique and diverse in their own ways. A few students were of different races and ethnic identities. There were several different lessons taught throughout the field experience, as well as many different ways of evaluation. The teacher-student, student-teacher, and student-student interactions were excellent and Mrs. Gerard’s classroom management skills have created a wonderful classroom-learning environment to which you can see different theories being used.
The group observation occurred at an International school. The primary school counselor was the facilitator. He meets with individual classes every month. The ages of the students range from 3-11 years old, which represented Pre-k through 5th grade. Each class is pulled out to the counselors classroom for a 45 minute session led by the school counselor. The counselors classroom has minimal distractions with lots of positive quotes. The chairs are set up in a semi-circle so that all can look at each, along with some students sitting on a carpet in the middle.
All effective educators need to find ways to motivate their students. The kids that fill our classrooms have different strengths and weaknesses. It is critical that teachers recognize the strengths and weaknesses of their students so they can use the right classroom management strategies to motivate their kids. In this particular case, the student named Jodie is inattentive and uninterested and neither the teacher intern or classroom teacher have a clue how to handle this situation. Ms. Marcia Thomas, who is the young intern feels that Jodie is just a problem child that lacks motivation and there is nothing she can do for this particular student. Ms. Thomas and the lead teacher Ms. Egan both lack the needed classroom management strategies that are necessary to motivate and engage students in a positive learning environment.
In developing relationships with learners, Freire suggested spending time talking and listening to students in order to get to know them and to gain their participation in class. That admonition has been incorporated into practice by numerous other educators. While many of the strategies in Tom Daly’s book were simple classroom management tips (2013)...
My classroom consists of twenty students of different background. There are 12 boys and 8 girls. Twelve students are learning on a 2nd grade level, four are learning above level, and four are learning below level. The four students that are below level are resource students. They leave the classroom three times a week for three hours in persistent to resource instruction purposes. This week’s unit lesson will cover the material, objectives and curriculum of learning.
Formal classroom observations can be effective if they are approached differently than the traditional practices of the past. Most importantly, administrators, other evaluators, and teachers need to have a clear understanding of what competent performance ...
On April 14th, I got the opportunity to observe Mrs.Osborne's 11th grade AVID class and her 12th grade AP Government class. Mrs. Osborne is a social studies and AVID teacher at Reynolds High School. She has been teaching for 33 years. In the classroom the desks are set up in rows facing the front of the room. Mrs.Osborne's desk is placed in the back corner of the room. On the left side of the room there was a white board and on it written out was each classes learning objective of the day, the days agenda, and what the homework for the day is. At the front of the room students grades are posted by student ID number on a board. The left side of the room had labeled drawers with supplies.
Tauber, R. T. (2007). Classroom Management: Sound theory and effective practice. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Publishing Group. Retrieved from
As I reflect on my experiences observing in three different classrooms over the last three months, I cannot express how much I have learned by being in the classroom. I began the Master of Science in Education last fall and previous to the practicum experience I had taken 8 classes. I read books, listened to the experiences of my classmates and instructors, reflected on my own education, and tried to imagine how this information was going to prepare me to face a classroom of elementary school students. While I learned theories and skills that should be known by any educator, these classes could not teach me what I most desired to know: what tangible steps could I take to correctly implement all of the correct ways of teaching.