Observing A Third-Grade Classroom Environment

For my observation, I observed a first to third grade special day class at a public Fresno Unified School District classroom in Fresno, California. When I first entered the classroom all the students, approximately 10 students, were sitting down on the rug in front of the class as the teacher was reading a short story to them. When she finished they would go over their reading assignment.

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

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

In this lesson, my students used all of their knowledge obtained from the previous lesson to investigate and explore in the science lab. The content of this lab is asking students to compare and contrast basic properties of matter. The objective for this lesson is for them to measure the length (Type of matter), weigh different objects, and measure the volume of different objects using types of matter. These objective coincide with my unit objective 2: Given multiple choice questions students will compare and/ or contrast the physical properties of solids, liquids, and/ or gases. To make certain that my students will meet the objectives given I created three mirrored centers with twelve minute intervals. The class was also divided into six

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

Ms. Collin’s class had lots of books placed throughout the classroom. There were also many comfortable places for the students to read. She has a word wall and alphabet center both easily seen by all students. I observed Ms. Collin’s class during an interactive read aloud. The students sat on a big rug in front of the teacher and listened as she read the book, How Rocket Learned to Read. Before she started reading she asked the students a few questions about the cover of the book. She choose a student to point out and read the title of the book, She asked the students to tell her where the author’s name was on the cover, she also asked the students what word to look for while searching for the author’s name. She called on several students to predict what they thought was going to happen in the book based on the cover photo and the title too. Throughout the book the teacher would allow students to finish sentences, predict what was going to happen next, and take notes on a chart divided into two sections; what we think and evidence. She discussed with the students what certain words mean throughout the book as well. After Ms. Collins was done reading, they had a whole group conversation about the notes they wrote on the chart.

In a third classroom I was observing they were learning about inferring, the teacher had the students recall and tell him what had happened so far before beginning reading. While reading he would stop and as the kids to infer how a character felt about something happening and why. The students then would be asked to predict what they thought would happen based on what they inferred. With only a little guidance the students the students were able to understand the content of the book based off predictions,inferring and using clues from the

Space and furnishing: The classroom I observed has appropriate lighting and has a good room temperature. I overall did not see any repairs that needed to be done. This classroom and center in general seems to be well maintained.

It was a beautiful day that I decide to come inside and get something to munch. As I enter the room it feels like a magical kingdom inside the four walls protecting this world. It just feels like there is no other place to be around campus than here where lives seem to be alive and enjoying the company of other classmates. While walking in you just feel the positive energy everyone has around this cafeteria. In your mind you’re just thinking of what you’re going to eat and to make your stomach happy. Then the smell of the food just makes you crave more just like the snickers commercial where you are someone else because of hungry. Then I ask the chef that I wanted a cheesesteak with lettuces, tomatoes, onions and some jalapeno with an order of fries. After, few minutes I got my food and head to the cashier to pay, then I was looking for a seat to admired the lives in the cafeteria. After I found a seat in the best spot of the cafeteria I was just catching my eye on what was going on in this magical

After analyzing my sleep for the past week, I’ve learned that on the average weekday I’m getting around 9 hours of sleep. While on the weekend I get an average of 8 ¼ hours of sleep. Even though I am getting the recommended amount of sleep of around 8 to 9 hours, I notice that I get more sleep during the summer compared to the school year. I conclude this is due to the different environment between the summer months and the school year.

When I arrived at the classroom, Mr. Art was in the room and appeared to be picking up a stack of books. He told me that the class was out at lunch and that when the class returned, they would be splitting into two groups. The 6th graders would be staying in the classroom with another teacher to work on math and the 5th graders would be going with him to another room to work on a few different subjects. Since the students were not currently in the room, I took this time before my observation to get a layout of the room and note all the information that was written on the whiteboard. I looked around to see what was on student’s desks and what materials seemed to be available to students in the classroom. The student’s desks were in a pod like

The engagement consisted of the teacher displaying all the color coordinated flower parts terminology on the word wall. The students were encouraged to do a talk, pair, share to come up with possible ideas for what the lesson was about. The teacher introduced and briefly discussed five vocabulary terms that were essential for the flower part dissection lab, which were: sepal, ovary, petals, stamen, and pistils. These terms were placed on their labeling diagram, which helped the students when labeling their flower parts lab diagram during the dissection. The students were extremely motivated to figure out what the lesson was a bout from the word wall terminology. Most of the students had a pretty good idea for what the lesson was about,

I attended a studio recital that featured singers of all different ages and abilities. The end of the song, when the singer would receive applause, was my favorite part of the performances because they would just light up and have a bright smile on their face. I also loved watching them take cues from their voice teacher, who was in the very back, giving them small reminders as they sang. A lot of them, whenever they would receive a cue from the voice teacher, would just start to smile and laugh a little bit. It seemed like their personality came out more when they were focusing on the voice teacher.