Classroom Observation Paper

On April 14th, I got the opportunity to observe Mrs.Osborne's 11th grade AVID class and her 12th grade AP Government class. Mrs. Osborne is a social studies and AVID teacher at Reynolds High School. She has been teaching for 33 years. In the classroom the desks are set up in rows facing the front of the room. Mrs.Osborne's desk is placed in the back corner of the room. On the left side of the room there was a white board and on it written out was each classes learning objective of the day, the days agenda, and what the homework for the day is. At the front of the room students grades are posted by student ID number on a board. The left side of the room had labeled drawers with supplies.
Her AVID 11 class had about 18 students. For this

class, Mrs. Osborne did not utilize any technology but she did utilize the whiteboards in the room. On Thursday, students had mock interviews with volunteers from the community, so on Friday they were learning how to write thank you notes. Mrs. Osborne started off the class acknowledging how professional the students were during their interviews. She then explained that they were going to write thank you notes to all the people that volunteered their time to help run these mock interviews. She pulled up the projector screen and behind it on the whiteboard the names of the interviewers were written out. On a whiteboard to the left she had a template written out for how to structure a thank you note. She gave specific instructions for how to write a thank you note, and told students on what their options were once they finished writing their thank you note. While Mrs. Osborne was explaining how to write a thank you note students were attentively listening and asking questions. While explaining the instructions she asked students simple questions to keep them engaged such as, "Where do you put the date on a thank you note?" Some of the questions students asked were if they had to write out the month or if they could simply put 4/14/2017. They also asked if they had to use the word dear when addressing a thank you note.
Throughout the period, Mrs.

Osborne floated throughout the room and checked with intent that everyone was on track. This kept the students on task and actively working the entire period. In addition, while she was floating around the room she used positive reinforcement. She gave specific and crystal clear instructions on what she expected from her students during the period. It was also clear that she had high expectations for all her students. At the beginning of the class period she pointed out that learning how to write thank you notes was important because everyone needs practice the conventions of writing thank you notes because once they start interviewing for jobs they are going to have to know how to write a thank you note. I thought telling student why it mattered was important because it motivated them to pay attention to instructions. Once students began working on their thank you cards she pulled away two students who missed the assignment for the day before ot ecplain it to them. In my opinion, this was great time management because if she were to do that during the beginning of the period the rest of the class would have been sitting with nothing to do for 5-10 minutes. When she needed to get the classes attention she would say something along the lines of, "If I could have everyone put their stuff down and look at me because I like to be the center of attention." This made students laugh but it also got their attention

quickly.
Mrs. Osborne's 12th grade AP Government class was a class of about 16 students. When I observed they were in the process of studying the Bill of Rights. Although Mrs. Osborne was lecturing the entire period, students were engaged and asked numerous questions. Mrs. Osborne used a projector and screen to display already typed up headlines for notes. In order to keep students engaged, Mrs. Osborne asked questions such as "What do we think of when we think of speech?" She also used real life examples of free speech to help her students develop a deeper understanding of what they were discussing. I think this particular topic was of interest to student in light of the recent presidential election. Students asked questions such as, "So is racism a protected free speech?" To which Mrs. Osborne answered, "It kind of is. You have the constitutional right to be a horrible awful person. You have the constitutional right to be a complete jerk."
Mrs. Osborne was my high school U.S government teacher my senior year, and I always looked forward to going to her class. She is one of the teachers that inspired and encouraged my dream to become a high school teacher. My hope is to one day go back to teach at Reynolds High School. When I asked Mrs. Osborne what advice she had for me on developing lesson plans in the future she told me to always plan more than you need to. Even if you do not finish everything you planned to the lesson can be continued the next day. Over planning is much better than under planning because it's a lot better to not have students finish everything than have nothing to do for 20 minutes because they finished quickly.