Classroom Observation Paper

In my practicum assignment I was able to observe at the Alamo Elementary School in Alamo, Tennessee, which was in a rural setting. I observed Mrs. Anna Pope’s fifth grade class for eight of my practicum hours. Mrs. Pope would teach her homeroom class reading and social studies, then they would switch halfway through the day and she would teach the same lessons to Mrs. Lilly’s class. Mrs. Pope’s first group of students had sixteen girls and eight boys, and her second group of students had fourteen girls, and ten boys. Through observing Mrs. Anna’s fifth grade classes I was able to see overt routines to gain or sustain students’ attention, teacher modeling or explicit step by step directions, classroom climate regarding risk or challenge, and

rewards and consequences.
One of the things Mrs. Anna had in her classroom to help her establish routines was a grid made onto one of her white boards which assigned different students to different responsibilities of the day. For example, one student would be responsible for taking certain items from one class to another, or one student would turn of the lights if they were watching a video. This created less room for interruptions in the classroom and was able to help with smoothing transitions between classrooms. This gave the students the chance to build their own self-efficacy by them taking responsibility for completing their task. Routine was also established in the classroom when she would always have the students raise their hands before they were allowed to speak in the classroom. This would allow her to be able to hear answers from the students clearly and to be able to have better class discussion. This was able to lead to higher-order thinking with her students because of the questions she was able to ask from the discussions that were being made with the students. For example, the students where reading a book called “Hatchet” by Gary Paulsen and the boy in the story had just talked about wanting to commit suicide because he finally felt like he was truly stranded in the woods. The students started talking about understanding the hopelessness he was feeling and Mrs. Pope used questions to get them to think about what his hopelessness in the story meant compared to their personal hopelessness in the situations they where bringing up. This was great to get to see in action because if I ever have fifth graders, I would want to read this book with them and be able to discuss the story with them. This discussion led to real life comparisons and gives me hope in being able have and use these types of discussions with my own students. Secondly, the way Mrs. Anna was able to give the students explicit step by step directions allowed the students to always understand what they where being asked to do. I noticed when explaining an activity/assignment she would always repeat herself multiple times, and ask the students if they understood what they should be doing. I would want to do this in my future classroom because this saved her a lot of repetition later on while the students were trying to complete the assignment and created a more focused environment. I think this would also be a great way to incorporate scaffolding in the classroom if over time instead of repeating the step multiple times, I could give the steps and then ask students to repeat those steps back to me. Next, there was an interesting situation with a particular student always acting out in the classroom. He/she did not listen to any of the routine rules that Mrs. Anna had established. He/she would always talk to other students around the classroom, constantly leave his seat without permission, and lacked respect for Mrs. Anna. The first day I saw these actions I immediately questioned why Mrs. Anna didn’t automatically address his/her misbehaviors. I had come to find out that it had everything to do with the way the parents wanted their child to be treated in the classroom, and that there had already been disagreements with them earlier in the year. I had been told about how as teachers we always have to justify our teaching to one person or another, but this was a real life situation to be able to see what this might actually look like. It made me question how I would justify my teaching and philosophy to parents and my school. A lot of the modes to be able to do this comes from incorporating what I learned in UNI 300 Incorporating Arts in the classroom and then using information like what congress uses as the six pillars of character. Finally, the last thing I was able to observe in Mrs. Anna’s classroom was the way the she used reward and consequences. Because of the way Mrs. Anna held a pretty constant routine in the classroom, she was able to hold the students accountable in their actions and how well they chose to follow the rules. One reward she would give to her students was if one of the surrounding teachers gave her class a compliment, then she would make a link for a paper chain. Through out the year the link would get longer and once the paper chain reached the floor, the students would be able to have an extra recess at the city park down the road. On the flip side of this scenario there are consequences. Consequences that were able to be given because of how well the students were following the classroom rules. For example, if the students were not following the poster telling them what type of voice they should be using then they could end up getting minutes taken away from their regular recess. This was of directing student behavior encouraged more extrinsic motivation than intrinsic motivation. I love the way Mrs. Anna was able to do special things with this students and I believe it was necessary for her to uphold her students to the strict standards she set because they would easily try to go out of control. However, when teaching to my own students I would want to use these models along with incorporating ways for the students to become more intrinsically motivated so that they would be able to continue their growth after leaving my classroom.
The last two hours of my ten hour practicum was with the lovely Laura- Beth. She is a nine year old girl in third grade. I was able to meet her through a previous co-worker and church friend. The first part of our conversation was about catching up and coming over again sometime to do her nails and maybe have another sleepover. After I let her lead the conversation for a while I begin to ask her questions about school. I asked her what she had been learning recently, what she liked/disliked about what she was learning, if she had made any new friends in school this year, etc. One of the more significant things that stuck out to me was when she started talking about learning how to write a paragraph. She said this was a challenging task because it wasn’t just about learning how to write a paragraph, but it was also about learning the types of sentences that are used to form a great paragraph. This helped to remind me to truly think about how new everything will seem to students at first because it is many time the first time they are learning these topics. It became much more important for me as the teacher to try to see into what it may look like having a student’s mindset and not just thinking about how best to teach a subject to my students from my own perspective. If I always taught this way there would always be a big chance that they didn’t fully understand the concepts I was trying to get across.
In conclusion, by having this observation experience I was able to think deeply what it look like being the teacher that I want to be, but to also remember how to prepare for obstacles and being flexible along the way.

My goal is to be a teacher who is student-oriented. Always looking at what the students’ needs are, using theories and my knowledge of education to best implement this in my classroom. Zone of Proximal Development is a tool I can use to tie my observations together. I can use Zone of Proximal Development to scaffold my students because as a teacher I will start helping them to complete and understand assignment by me walking through those with them. Then overtime the students would learn how to do these on their own, needing little to no help from me. This also instills self-efficacy in my students because they are being held responsible to complete the task that are being given to them. Finally, the students are challenged to the intrinsically motivated because through scaffolding and teacher modeling I would be giving the a better understanding of what it looks like to be successful so that they would then feel confident in finding this same success on their own. For me teaching is going to be about setting my students up for success and being confident to be successful in other classes and throughout their

life.