Observation Reports
Classroom Observation 1
On September 16th 2013 I started my Observation in a 6th and 7th grade classroom at Lakewood Middle School. I observed two teachers that have different teaching methods. I observed Mrs. MacCabe who is a sixth grade CA teacher and Mrs. Gerner who is a 7th grade teacher and also teaches CA.
I saw many different ways they both approach teaching and the students. When I was in Mrs. MacCabes class I saw many different things she did that made the students get involved in the class even if it meant getting strict with them to do their work. The classroom had a few posters about what was going on in the class and what they are learning at the time. Mrs. Gerner was a very exciting and happy teacher with a lot of posters and other little things around the room. For example, she had the reading tub, which is a bath tub with pillows in it that the students could sit in and read. There was also a lot of color throughout the whole room.
Mrs. MacCabes class was working on a research paper about “School Uniforms” and if they should be allowed or not. They had to find pros and cons from the articles they were given. They had to have a thesis, an introduction paragraph, 3 body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Mrs. MacCabe had many helpful worksheets she gave to the students that helped them organize their paper and collect information about the articles. In Mrs. Gerners class, they were reading the book, The Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. Through the book the students were learning about suspense. Mrs. Gerner would give them “On the Bells” and the questions were about suspense. For example, one day she gave each student a sticky note and she gave them page numbers in the book. On the sticky note the students had to write “Why it felt suspenseful?” and “What did the author do to create suspense?”
Mrs. MacCabe was hard on the kids at the beginning of class because most of them were talkative and didn’t want to sit and learn. She wanted to get the students attention and her voice would get loud and firm when she was describing to the students what they were going to work on that day in class. Once the students got quiet and settled in she would talk with an easy going voice. The students were quiet for the most part when they started to work on their research papers about School Uniforms. Mrs. MacCabe wouldn’t really walk around the room that much but she would sit in the chair at the front of the classroom and the students would come up to her if they had questions and she would answer all their questions. Before they worked on their research papers they were doing a project with climax, setting, plot, and etc. They were in groups with 2 other students and made a story. Once they were done with their stories they went to the library where there were 30 ipads. The students used an app called Toontastic to create their stories using cartoon characters. The students worked very productively with the ipads and in the two classes I observed they were no troubles. They thought using the ipads was fun because they got to record their own voices to the characters they choose. Mrs Gerner was a very exciting teacher, when they were reading the book as a class she would be walking all around the room. She would frequently stop reading and ask the students questions about suspense and why it was suspenseful. She would change her tone of voice when something suspenseful in the book was about to happen and hint to the students that this is what we are learning about. She was very energetic and really tried to get the students involved and follow along in the book. Mrs. Gerner gave all the students a book log; it had character traits, summaries, vocabulary, and etc. Once they were done reading for the day, the students would fill out the book log on the chapter.
There were a lot of different students that had different styles of learning and different personalities. One student that caught my eye was one that was very smart and would work really hard but was emotionally unstable. He came into class late one day and was in tears. Mrs. MacCabe sent the rest of the students to the library to work on their Toontastics. She stayed back and talked to the kid and then came to the library. She said he is very smart just think kids pick on him or don’t like him. I don’t know if that’s true or not but he was just very emotional and it was something new almost every day. A lot of the students in the second hour I was there are very outgoing and willing to work very hard but they were normally the kids that were the class clowns. Mrs. MacCabe made a seating chart for the computer lab putting the talkative ones as far away from each other as possible. She was also a lot more strict with them.
Some things I realized throughout my observations that most 6th graders had iPhones. They were attached to them and were going crazy the day IOS 7 came out. Most of them had social media and would ask for Mrs. MacCabes instagram. When I went to middle school, most 6th graders didn’t have a cell phone at all; I actually had to pay for my own phone. Also, we were not allowed to use it at all until after school, they were to remain in are lockers and off or we got a detention. Now I see them using them in class all the time and the teachers don’t care.
My most memorable moment during my observations was when a few kids walked into class and they just shouted at me “SHAGGY” it caught me off guard and wasn’t sure why they called me that because they never would tell me.
Classroom Observation 2
During this observation I observed Mr. Harvey a sixth grade social studies teacher at Lakewood Middle school. During this observation I observed in this classroom for two weeks from October 31st through November 14th of 2013.
In his classroom he had a huge map of the world in the back of the room that stretched from wall to wall and from the ceiling down to the floor. I saw a lot of kids looking back at it for help. Mr. Harvey would use at as a reference when he taught his lessons. Also, there were a lot of books about history and that had very helpful information that the students could use. In this classroom I felt like the students were very involved in the lessons but at some points had hard times focusing. I also felt bored at some points during the lessons because there was a lot of the lessons were reading from the text book.
During my time in the classroom they were learning about Ancient Egypt. They learned about the geography, the different social classes, daily life, and the pyramids. Each student got a pink workbook that was roughly 26 pages long. There were activities on each page including maps and short answer questions. There were also a lot of fun activities in the book such as filling out postcards and the student had to describe the pyramids in each postcard. The lesson I gave was about Ancient Egypt’s social classes. He doesn’t use very much technology in the classroom so I tried to put a little in the lesson. We filled out two pyramids, on one pyramid they had to put students, principal, teachers, student council, office staff, and assistant principal on a pyramid from most important to least important and explain why you put them there. The next pyramid they had to put the correct Ancient Egyptian class on the pyramid and draw a symbol and a short sentence explaining why they drew that symbol that they think represents that class well. To include technology in the lesson, I used the projector to write the students answers and opinions down.
Mr. Harvey I thought was very good at keeping the students involved and focused. Mr. Harvey said to me that he doesn’t like to raise his voice and yell at the students because that will get the students what they want to see. Instead he just uses a very calm voice when students get off task and explain to them slowly and calmly on what they should do or should be doing at that time. Also, he would use detention slips as a warning if a single student was acting up, he would put the detention slip face down as a warning and for the most part that student was quite for the rest of the class. When giving his lessons he didn’t use any technology it was mostly reading from the textbook and then working in the pink workbook. Depending on how the students acted during the lesson he decided if they can work in groups or individual when working in the workbook. There were some students that Mr. Harvey could just give a little look to when they were acting up and that student would be quite.
The students were different every day, most of the students were well behaved and got all their work done that day in class. A few students were different; some talked a lot, weren’t appropriate, and were trying to be the class clown. It’s funny because most of the students that got in trouble were the students with some of the best questions and understood the context better. They weren’t afraid to ask questions and engage the teacher if they had questions about what was going on. The students that weren’t generally getting in trouble or getting the look from Mr. Harvey, were the ones scared to ask questions and get involved. When Mr. Harvey was walking around the classroom he would engage them first asking them what they should be doing and he would have to explain to them. I think this just has to do with the students personality but could also be because they could be getting bullied or hiding something.
A few other things that stuck out to me is how a lot of students worked together with other people, mainly their friends. Usually when working in groups you can get easily distracted but for the most part they worked for the whole time finishing the assignment. They were also better than high school kids with keeping their phones away. I don’t know the cell phone policy there but I know they brought them to their classes but they never used them.
I have a few memorable moments from this observation. The first day I walked into the classroom I walked up to Mr. Harvey to introduce myself. The students were all whispering stuff like “who is he?” “He use to be in Mrs. McCabes class” and one student doesn’t whisper but doesn’t yell just simply says “Is that a leprechaun.” The whole class including me and Mr. Harvey started to laugh. Another one of my most memorable moment was getting up in front of the class room and giving a lesson. I thought it was very fun and I loved trying to make the students have fun while learning.