Teaching Classroom Observation

During my senior year at UMass Amherst, I was a teaching assistant (TA) for an integrated experience kinesiology course. In this position I was responsible for guiding groups of students in creating a wellness program. Each individual group was assigned a specific target population with a chronic disease to tailor their services to. At the end of the semester the students presented their project to professors and were graded on the accuracy of their research and design of their project. As a TA, I held a weekly discussion with the groups individually where I taught a lesson plan and supervised their meeting. Ultimately, the professor wanted the students to become self-sufficient and run their own discussion by delegating tasks and setting deadlines themselves.

This was my first experience leading students in achieving an academic task. My dilemma was learning how to assess each group's strengths and weaknesses in order to effectively lead them to success. Each of the four groups I was responsible for differed dramatically in how they learned and participated in discussion. In order to modify my teaching

During our first discussion I observed each individual's behavior and body language. The students barely talked to each other, sat with their arms crossed, and were hesitant to respond to each question I asked. I became aware that I needed to get the students more involved and to generally make them more independent in running their own discussion. I decided to assign roles within the group, such as leader, timekeeper, and scribe. Next I split the students into smaller subgroups and assigned each group a topic to research. I felt that if they were in smaller groups they would feel more comfortable to voice their opinion. This helped significantly in getting the students more active in class. By the end of the semester, this group exhibited newly acquired direction abilities, relying less on me to lead the