Importance Of Classroom Observation In Preschool

I did my classroom observation at Brooklyn Preschool of Science (BPOS), located in the neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York. BPOS is a small school serving a little over 100 students from 2 years old to pre-kindergarten. I had the opportunity to do my observation in the pre-k classroom, which consisted of 17 students. On the day of my observation, the teacher had all the students seated in the circle time area for a read-aloud. She explained to them that she is going to read a fun and exciting book to them and that she wants them to pay close attention to what the book is about because she is going to ask them questions in the end. The children have been learning about living things in the neighborhood, and they have been talking

The teacher engaged the students by asking questions or making comments about what she read. She also asked the children to make prediction about what they think will happen next. The children were actively engaged in the read-aloud and were not passively listening to the teacher. According to Smith and Roe (2012), “reading aloud is most effective in the development of language and vocabulary when children are actively involved rather than passively listening” (p. 131). During reading, the teacher also modeled thinking aloud strategy as she engaged students in the reading. She would often stop and make comments such as “I see that the baby bird cannot find his mother, I wonder how he is feeling,” “where do you think the baby bird will find his mother.” After thinking aloud, she directed a question to the students asking them how they would feel if they could not find their mother. What the teacher was doing was to have the students make text-to-self-connection which is also very important in comprehension.

After reading the story, the teacher led the students into a class discussion about the book. The teacher asked plenty of detail questions and encouraged the students to state whether or not they agree with the comments of their peers. The children were given plenty of opportunity to share their ideas using information from the text as well as from their own experiences.