Observing A Second Grade Classroom

1. Describe the organization and physical setting of the classrooms you observed. Pay particular attention to safety and accessibility, the physical arrangement of the room, the classroom environment and appearance (Danielson 2e):

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.

I observed a sixth grade classroom (eleven to twelve years of age) at a middle school in Ringgold, Georgia. The classroom seemed to be fairly even in regards to how many children of each sex were in the classroom. The majority of the students were white with a few african american and hispanic children among the mix. The sixth grade classes did not have enough employees to only teach one subject therefore, the teacher that I observed taught language arts and mathematics. The first thing you notice when you walk into the classroom is the mathematical shapes all along the upper wall like a wallpaper border. These shapes were projects from her students in the years before. The next thing that you’ll notice is the way the desks were set up. They were set up in three separate groups. One group of around twelve desks faced the

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

For my observation, I observed a second grade general education classroom at Emmanuel Children’s Mission. The day of my observation, I met with Mrs. Cooper, the classroom teacher to go over the purpose of me examining her classroom, which is to observe three students. I observed two boys and a girl, one African American boy and the other boy and girl were Hispanic. They all were seven years old. Student A, the African American boy according Mrs. Cooper, he is on the spectrum and receives small group instruction through RTI. Student B, who is the Hispanic boy he is learning well thus far, without any signs of a learning disability and so is student C, the girl.

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.

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

Every time I go to a salon I am very open about my life with my beautician. It made me wonder; Am I the only one who does this? I set out to observe this behavior by scheduling a pedicure. What better way to complete a homework assignment and to be able to observe without looking conspicuous? The salon I went to had ten pedicure chairs. As I walked in, I noticed that I was only the third customer there for a pedicure, so it looked as if I would not be able to observe what I came to see. An employee of the salon asked me to pick out my nail color, have a seat in chair number 7, and then proceeded to ask me what type of pedicure I wanted. After I chose my color and type of pedicure they then asked me if I wanted anything to drink. They offered me water, soda or wine! I thought about the

This lesson was from the Math Investigation books that are provided to the teachers every year. This was the start of a new unit, which was unit five. I was a little nervous to start off the unit considering this would be how the students view the rest of the unit. I had some trouble reading about the lesson when I first saw it. I got a little confused and thought about why the cube train was involved. I ended up looking ahead and seeing how it fit in to other units and it made a lot of sense.

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

The room is arranged in a way to promote group learning. The desks are grouped together in either groups of four or five. There are 18 students in the room, 3 are absent in first period. The room has three separate places to do reading, one with just a cluster of pillows, another in the corner of the room with book shelves, drapes to create a warm and fun environment, with more pillows, and another underneath a paper made tree, with a seat and more pillows. There are no other adults in the classroom, other than the teacher. There are no students with obvious physical impairments of mobility issues. There are no rules for the classroom behavior posted. The teacher is very firm, yet quite loving, the students seem to hold a great deal of respect

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.