Observing is Learning

 

                Observations are one of the best forms of learning.

I was able to enter a classroom and view it as a student and assess it as a future teacher. 
 

My first observation:

               Room 111 was dark when I entered, I could not read anything that was posted on the walls or blackboard.  I took a seat towards the back of the room, so I did not disturb anyone.  I could feel the excitement in the room, as the teacher was setting up the movie we were going to watch, (he was having technical difficulties) the students all around me were talking about the upcoming vacation and holiday.  As the movie played some students continue to talk and some even fell asleep.

                We watched a 60 minute segment video that showed many different engineering processes happening in the world today.  It started with Chernobyl and continued on to the bent prop project.    The video was very interesting, it actually showed the film crew walking all around Chernobyl and how a town just walked away and left everything were it was, it was a ghost town.

                The assessment for this video segment was to be a written review of the film with specific questions that needed to be answered within the paragraphs.  Getting the questions at the end of the film could be difficult for students, especially with students falling asleep during the film. Having the questions at the beginning of the film might be a good way to focus students on what exactly you want them to remember and touch on.  I do not know if the students were giving these prompt questions at the start of the class, I was a few minutes late getting into this classroom from my SED classroom.

                I do not know if the teacher had given the prompt questions in advance or if this was a standard set of questions because each student went to work as soon as the lights were turned on and the questions were written on the board.  I did not hear or see any protest with this form of assessment of these particular video segments.  There were a lot of different discussions going on at the same time so the classroom became a little noisy.  The teacher did a very good job at redirecting the conversations back to the tasks at hand and quieting the classroom so other students were not disturbed.

                I will use this type of assessment in my future classrooms to direct the learning objectives that may pertain to the movie or video clips being used.

My second observation:
                I decided to go back to the same classroom again, this particular teacher is a first year teacher and I am very curious to know how it is to be in his shoes.

                Class today is actually a bubble lab experiment.  Students were broken up into groups and each given a particular task to do in the experiment.  The initial tasks such as record keeper, timer, and bubble blower were assigned and the teacher gave a demonstration of how to run the experiment.  Students were then given the chance to conduct the experiment on their own with the group.  All results were recorded on a graph and the roles were switched for each person in the group so there would be multiple different results to compare and graph.

                The lab itself went well but, there was a student who decided to become disruptive and not listen to the teacher.  He continue to get out of his seat, stand on his chair and desk, and walk around the room.  The teacher was very quiet and direct with his expectations to this student.  He did not yell at him or make a spectacle of him, he just walked up to him and explained the rules again.  The teacher gave the student multiple chances to behave and then said he was going to call the discipline team if he did not comply.  All of this happened without any yelling or confrontation between the teacher and the student.  I do believe if we had not been there to observe and watch but were actually doing the lab experiment, we may not have even known something was happening.

                The teacher handled this situation perfectly, he did not bring attention to the behavior, which can cause the behavior to continue or escalate.  The teacher did handle it with a very prompt and direct approach, he tried to redirect the student and explained the rules, and when this did not work, he warned the student one last time that he was going to call the discipline team.  When these measures did not work the teacher called the discipline team and very quietly to not disturb the rest of the classroom or surrounding classrooms, the student was escorted out to be dealt with.

                I have learned that a very direct and quiet approach will help to not escalate a situation and redirect the students.  I did witness this working on other students within the room.

                I do plan on using this form of action within my classrooms in the future.