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During the course of my fall semester at Elgin Community College, had the opportunity to observe an elementary school, middle school, and high school classroom. For my classroom observations, I went to Westfield Community School and Jacobs High School. Each classroom visit was to be five hours, making the required observation time fifteen hours. My themes for my paper will be classroom management and time on task. Theme 1: Classroom Management A.
For my elementary classroom observation, I chose to go back to the school attended from kindergarten to eighth grade, Westfield Community School. Since my area of interest is elementary education, I chose to observe a third grade classroom. All of my elementary observation hours were spent observing Ms. Co’s third grade classroom. My first theme for my observation paper is classroom management. “Classroom management is a term used by teachers to describe the process of ensuring that classroom lessons run smoothly despite disruptive behavior by students” (Google).
In my opinion, a classroom should be a cooperative environment, where both the teacher and student invest as much of their time and energy in succeeding as possible. Also, student to student communication should be present. That requires encouragement and support on both ends of the spectrum. In my elementary classroom observation, the teacher did a great job with classroom management. Her classroom was very welcoming. The walls were filled with masses of pictures encouraging learning consisting of colors, shapes, letters, animals, numbers, and objects.
There was a schedule on the board showing the times for each subject and a calendar with the current and previous days dates on it. In the back of the room, there was a rocking chair with a large blue rug in front of it, where they do their morning meeting, which I will explain later. Overall, the classroom environment was very homey. Ms. Co’s lesson plans were interesting, informative and very well planned out. Every morning her class held a “morning meeting”. It started with a chosen student that sits in the rocking chair and reads the class rules to her peers, who are sitting in a circle on the rug in front of her.
They do a greeting where each student says “Sup (name)” to the next. This got the students involved. It continued until theft gone around the circle. Next, a question is chosen out of a hat and each student has to go around and answer the question, giving the students a chance to communicate with one another. We learned about this in class when we talked about classroom management and how children being involved ensure that all students are a part of the classroom learning community. “Jane Adam believes in socialized education where everyone is included in the classroom” (Lecture notes, 9-22). Hough the Way that Ms. C involved her students was incredible. B. For my middle school classroom observation, I also went to Westfield Community School, to observe a seventh grade class. The first thing I noticed when align into Mr.. G’s class was that there was a warm up on the smart board, in the front of the room. While the students worked on their warm-up, Mr.. S stopped by their desks and gave feedback about their behavior and academic work. He constantly praised his students: “Good job”, “Perfect”, and “You’re on fire”.
He would wander the room, offering suggestions and encouragement, and asking questions and making comments, which made the students more engaged. That way, the students received feedback of what they have done correct and incorrect. He would monitor the class for signs of confusion or inattention and constantly check in with the students seeing how they were doing. It let the students obtain help right then and there. C. For my high school classroom observation, I observed several different teachers at Jacobs High School. All of the classes were English classes.
There was one particular teacher that had a classroom management style that stood out to me. As a teacher, it is their responsibility to teach positivist to the students whether it’s by showing them they care about the students by getting to know their personal interests or teaching positive student responsibility. When there is a costive learning environment, the students are more comfortable learning and they can build better relationships and show more respect for not only themselves but other students. Mrs.. F clearly had recognized relationships with the students.
When I walked into the room, I had a shirt on that was from the University of Iowa. One of his students asked me a question about the school and Mrs.. F joined in the conversation, adding that the student had family in Iowa. I noticed the relationships between Mrs.. F and her students. In one case, when the students exited the classroom, Mrs.. F wished them a DOD day, and in response almost all of the students gave some kind of acknowledgement, whether they thanked her or smiled. During the class, she consistently told her students how much she cared about them and how much she cared that they learned and grew as people. Attached the students faces as she told them this and I was able to tell from their reactions that they knew she meant exactly what she was saying and that it affected them. Her students seemed like they sincerely respected her and looked forward to seeing her. I believe this was built off the respect and bond that he has with the students. Theme 2: Time on Task A. “Time on task is the time engaged in learning activities” (Foundations of Education). While observing Ms. Co’s third grade elementary class, she displayed very good time on task methods.
The class began with the students quietly arriving in the classroom, taking their chairs down and beginning on their morning work. They were interrupted by the morning announcements and pledge, but immediately continued with their work after. Once they were done, they placed their morning work in their folders that hung on the wall. Ms. C then began to play music, and all of the students walked briskly to the jug in the back of the room where they held their daily morning meeting. The morning meeting consisted of class rules, a greeting, and a question of the day.
The students held this meeting all by themselves, as the teacher sat by and observed. At one point, a student was taking a long time to answer his question of the day, and Ms. C jumped in and reminded all of the students that they need to remember that everyone needs to have a turn answering the question of the day and that they were short on time. During the class, they had two brain breaks where they would get up from what they were doing, and dance to some music. It gave students the opportunity to relax their brain and have a little fun. But right after the brain break, they contain due doing what they should.
Ms. C has an activity called the daily 5 where the students have five options of lesson: read to self, work on writing, word work, read to someone, and listen to reading. They each were to choose what they wanted to do, and had fifteen minutes to do it. During that period of time, Student A was not on task. Instead of reading to self she began talking to Student B, who was independently reading. I overheard Student B telling Student A that she needed to continue reading on her own. Because of Student Bi’s reminder, Student A was back to silently reading. That kind of behavior is very cool to see in third graders.
Ms. C must be doing a great job with the students if they know how to keep each other on task. B. While observing Mr.. G’s seventh grade class, I saw awesome time management and time on task during his first hour. Because it was the first hour class, students came into the classroom and casually chatted with the teacher until the bell rang. After the pledge and announcements he transitioned into a warm-up activity, and made sure every student knew what he expected out of the Essen. They were tough questions so he walked around to room to make sure students were on the right track.
As students finished writing they were directed to quietly work on a research assignment that they had been working on for a few weeks. The class was able to work for almost a half hour before they started getting off task. Almost as soon as the chatter began, Mr.. S stepped in and had them go around the room sharing the most interesting fact they had found on their topic. He made sure that all of the students knew that they must be learning at all times. C. While observing Mrs.. As high school English class, she opened her class very effectively by literally just jumping right into the lesson.
There was no wait time, and the students knew what was expected of them. During the lesson being taught, Mrs.. F assigned an activity, told the students what to do, and then they were off doing it immediately. The objective was to identify relevance and significance of a literary piece through the soapstone method in order to prepare for the AP exam. Mrs.. F did not sit down once during the class period, instead she moved around the class at all times, helping her students and checking on their work. Her attention was never unfocused from them until the period ended.
The last class that was in with her, the teacher used an announcement to wrap up the class (about an upcoming due assignment). It was effective, and all eyes were on her as she described was expected of the students. Each student was fully on task the entire class, and she used the time in her classroom extremely wisely. Conclusion For my classroom observations, went to Westfield Community School and Jacobs High School to observe a third, seventh and јleft grade class. My paper included the themes of classroom management and time on task. Observed a total of fifteen hours for my education 100 class.
After fifteen hours of classroom observation, I look forward to being a teacher even more than at the beginning of this semester. However, there is a lot more to learn about the profession of teaching. It is very different than what one might anticipate. Everything I have learned up to this point has only made my future as a teacher more real and exciting.