Meehan (2014) argues, "Better teaching never comes from a political mandate...it comes from the heart of a prepared and caring teacher." (para 2). Ms. Fairchild, a 4th-grade teacher at Samuel Staples Elementary school in Easton, Connecticut, has an approach to teaching that follows Meehan’s words. After observing her class for a semester, I notice she designs her classroom with her students in mind. She does an excellent job preparing her students for academic success and carefully provides them with the adequate tools they need to achieve their goals. In addition, she encourages her students to be driven and attentive learners. Based on my observations, I have determined that she conducts a classroom in a way that is inspired by the ideas of Vygotsky’s sociocultural learning theory and Dweck’s attribution theory.
Samuel Staples Elementary School consists of 612 students, 82.8% are white, 6.2% are Asian, 6.2% are Hispanic, 0.8% are black, and 3.6% are of two races. Furthermore, the school has a roughly equal gender distribution. Socioeconomically, the majority of Samuel Staples’ students do not qualify for free or reduced lunch; 96.1% are ineligible for reduced/free lunches, while 3.3% qualify for free lunch and only 0.7% are eligible for reduced lunch (Grafiq, 2017). Ms. Fairchild’s class is predominantly white and it consists of 20 students; 10 of which are female and 10 of which are male.
During my time at Samuel Staples, I have paid close attention to two students in
Observing is a when you watch something very carefully and closely. I had to observe two classes close to my major. I want to become an early childhood Intervention specialist meaning I want to work with little special Ed students. I observed a middle school and elementary school class. In my middle school class which was 6th grade, it had many students who had IEP’s to 504 and had some accommodations. In my elementary school class, I observed a kindergarten and first grade Special Ed class, which was much smaller and had all boys. The students got all the accommodations they needed from shortening test to if they need a break in the middle of class. Both classes were very different in their own ways. Therefore, I will talk more about the observations with the goals they had, their unique learnings, assessments, technology, teaching strategies, resources they teachers had, and my perspective on the whole observation.
For my ethnographic research I am observing a second grade classroom. I have chosen to observe classroom reading and writing time with the students. In addition I have decided to interview three people (teacher, parent, and student) from the school at which I am completing my observation hours, P.S. 152 Gwendoline N. Alleyne School in Woodside, Queens to have a solid understanding of my research. I will use alternative name for students and teacher. Mrs. S is piloting a writing workshop in her classroom and ELA/ literacy standards will be the primary focus throughout her teaching. My primarily focus will be on the classroom routine.
The observation sites selected were selected for their stark contrast thus allowing for the most in depth analysis of the differences and similarities in play at these two different locations. The two locations where Central Classroom Building (CCB) 117 from one to two pm on the 22nd of September and traditional equipment play structure park area in Morgan Hill form three to four pm on the 23rd of September. There were eight kids surveyed at these two locations, they were all partaking in play of some sort and in a setting that encouraged it.
My last set of observation hours were done at PJ Jacobs’s Jr. high grades 7-9, located in the Stevens Point school district. The teacher I observed at this school was David Hauser. Prior to this practicum experience I had no knowledge about David, or any knowledge about the Stevens Point school system. David seems to have a very strong background in team sports and athletics among the Jr. high school and high school levels. I feel David’s involvement in sports reflected strongly in the way he managed the classroom, supported student learning, incorporated different teaching styles, and ultimately lacked the ability to maintain students attention resulting in irrelevant play and poor classroom behavior from students.
During the observation of Morning Meeting, I noticed that my mentor teacher separated the children by gender when the calendar helper counted the number of boys and the girls in the classroom. My mentor teacher asked the calendar helper to have either the boys or girls stand up first to be counted. When the children are getting ready to go outside or to the bathroom, the teacher has also the boys and girls in separate lines. I felt that there were other characteristics for the teacher to separate the children. For example, she could she could have asked the children stand up or line up based on their eye color, hair color, the color of their clothing, their favorite animal, or even the first letter of their name. If my teacher broadened the
On December 4, 2015 we observed the class for which we developed this response plan. Our main objective was to observe the setup of the classroom as well as the different instructional tools the teacher used to enhance her teaching. In addition, we wanted to see what strategies the teacher implemented to help the ELL and autistic students and see if they were similar to what had in our plan. Upon arriving, we observed that the teacher, Ms. Schmitt, had a large classroom with enough space for groups of students to work together. At the front of the classroom, was the teacher’s desk with a smart board behind it. Several other white boards filled the rest of the wall space. The board on the left was used mostly for instructional purposes while the two on the right were filled with vocabulary and important announcements such as upcoming tests dates. The extra space allowed the teacher to interact with all the students individually. Also, we noted that the teacher had placed the ELL students near the front of the room where she could easily help them or ask them to help each other. The students on the Autism spectrum where located near the back of the classroom where they had more room to work with their aids. However, none of these students were completely isolated from the teacher or rest of the class. Rather all of the students were able to easily interact with one another.
At the end of the lesson Students are going to be able to describe where they live using the verb "vivir" and "tener" in Spanish. During unit two, they been using the these verbs and in the beginning of the lesson they answer the "Do NOw" activity where I asked then: ?Donde tu vives? They answer the question in Spanish and used the verb in the correct tense. After that, they answer a listening question where they had to identify the part of the house using the vocabulary proposed at the beginning of the lesson. Finally, they started a project where they had to create a Floor plan and describe their ideal house. For this activity, they have to use the verb "tener" in present tense. The completion of these activities ensures the acquisition of the new vocabulary and the verbs tense. It is important to mention, that this lesson will continue next week because students need more time to complete their DOL activity.
First, do you enjoy teaching others? If so, teach something for which you have a deep passion.
Our objective this week was to observe classroom procedures. Miss. Williams expects her students to always stay on task even when she is not in the room. She anticipates that the students are quiet when they work independently and to not veer off onto another direction by talking to one another.
Classroom Two is also an Elementary special day class Ms. Lopez is the teacher, she has been teaching for 5 years. She has a Masters with her special education credential. She is Bilingual she speaks English and Spanish. The children she services have speech and language impairment and on the spectrum for Autism. The classroom ratio is one adult to two children. She had two instructional aide and 6 children in the classroom.
Sleep, attention, learning, and memory all go hand-in-hand when trying to improve the ability to learn and remember things. First of all, getting adequate sleep is beneficial in many ways. According to the National Sleep Foundation, adequate sleep for people age 18-25 is 7-9 hours per night. Getting enough sleep allows a person to have more energy to do daily tasks such as going to class and learning. The more sleep you get, the more awake and focused you will be during the day. Focusing your attention is also an important aspect of learning and remembering. Attentional focus basically means focusing on the things relevant to the task at hand and suppressing distractions. If you do not get enough sleep, your attentional focus will be decreased
Another student that I observed was always doing something that he wasn’t supposed to be doing. On the first day of my observations, the boy walked into the classroom late, without a backpack, and completely disrupted the class from doing their work. While observing the boy, I noticed that he had not picked up his pencil once to do his classwork, and when he was told to do his work, he would yell at the teachers and interrupt the students. To distract the boy from distracting other students, the teachers allowed him to color pictures and do other activities. When the science teacher came into the class to teach them a lesson, the boy kept distracting the class and kept getting up and walking around the classroom. He then started to draw on
Conducting classroom observations are very important to the prospective teacher. Observing helps show how experienced teachers manage their classroom. For this observation it was important to notice how the classroom was arranged, how the teacher interacted with the students, the teacher’s management style, and interview the teacher.
I have a good friend, Courtney, who is doing her student teaching in a fourth-grade classroom at Faubion elementary school, and she arranged for me to come in to observe her cooperating teacher's classroom. On Friday, December 1st at 10 o'clock I had the opportunity to observe Mrs. Makara's classroom for 45 minutes while the class was doing reading stations. The class is organized into six table groups with five students in each group. Mrs. Makara's overhead screen hangs in the front of the room near her table. I noticed that the class was arranged this way in order for all the students to all easily see the screen as well as collaborate with one another for the assignments and projects that are assigned in class. When I came into the classroom Mrs. Makara was finishing up teaching a math lesson. She was using a document camera to project the worksheet that students had in front of them on screen. She was also using a microphone while talking to the class. Courtney later informed me that was because one of their students has a hearing impairment so both Courtney and Mrs. Makara use the microphone when speaking to the class. Mrs. Makara assigned a couple of math problems for the students to work with their table groups to figure out. After each group figured out the answer to the problem Mrs. Makara asked for one volunteer to come up and project their work on the overhead projector. The student showed her work and talked through how her group figured out the solution. Afterward, Mrs. Makara asked all the students to put away their math work and get ready for reading stations.
The following data was gathered while fulfilling duties as a principal intern at Theresa Bunker Elementary School. The data was observed during five to seven minutes of classroom observation as part of a walk-through in the spring of the current school year. My cooperating supervisor for my internship was able to go on these walk-throughs with me in order to have a productive reflection meeting afterwards. This elementary school has two of each grade level from Kindergarten to sixth grade. Since it was more feasible in this small school setting, I actually was able to do a walkthrough in eight classes. Here I will report my observations from five of those walk-throughs. As I went in to each room I was looking for four