week 4

How does this teacher manage assessment?

I can tell that the teacher is constantly keeping an eye out for each one of her students. Each day she has the students one by one go to the back table and they sit with her while she asks them how their homework is going, she checks their current work that they are working on and gives them tips and she always gives them encouragement to keep working hard.

For the students that need a little extra "assessment" she might sit with them a little longer and ask more personal questions to see if she can find out why the child might not be turning in their homework, or why they aren't scoring well on their spelling tests etc.  She is always willing to help each of them and is always asking how she can help them do better.

week 6

What strategies does the teacher use to actively engage the students? How effective are these?

The teacher I have been shadowing does an incredible job at keeping the kids focused on what is being taught. Ways she actively engages the students are creating jingles for new words they are learning. She has fake money she has the students work with and lets them pretend to be adults and they have to accurately give the amount of money she has requested. She will have the kids do actions with certain activities she is doing to help them remember specific things that are important in that lesson.

I nanny one of the students in the class so I get to see her in the classroom as well as in the home. She is constantly singing the jingles she learns in class, at home. She always asks for our leftover change so she can count it. And she is always excited to tell me what she learned about at school. 

week 8

• What is the most important thing you have learned during fieldwork observation?  Why?

I would say that the most important thing that I learned during fieldwork observation would simply be that as a second grade teacher (and i'm sure every other grade as well) organization is key. A room full of 7 and 8 year old's can quickly become overwhelming, the teacher that I observed knew how to handle every situation to keep all of them under control. 

Not only did she have to make sure each child understood what was going on, she had to be sure that she was teaching in a way that was FUN and EFFECTIVE. I feel that the only way she accomplishes either of those was by staying organized and knowing her lesson plans. Granted this is her 20-something year of teaching second grade so she has it down to a science but even still, she has to somewhat make the lessons fitting for each class she has. 

Because the teacher was organized it allowed the children to have a better and easier learning environment. Whenever they had questions most of the time she could just point to the board because she already knew beforehand that question would be asked which allowed the teacher more time to focus on other things that needed to be done. 

week 7

What are the procedures the teacher uses to make everything run smoothly in the class?

The teacher that I have been over seeing has been teaching 2nd grade at the same school for about 20 years. She is incredibly good at getting the kids attention and making sure they stay on track. There are several things she does that I think help the keep the classroom running smoothly. First, I think that the way she has the tables set up in the classroom helps everything go smoothly through out the day. She has the tables set up in groups of 6 or less and together they all form a U shape so that when she is at the front of the classroom, she can easily see each child and each child can easily see her. I also think that helps the children focus on the front of the classroom. 

The teacher also created a card station where each student has their own card with their name on it, if they are doing good through out the day they get to put a sticker on the card, if they are not being good through out the day they have to pull their card which prevents them from getting a sticker that day. She also has a classroom helper who comes in to the classroom each day to help the students that are behind on assignments get caught up so that the teacher can focus on what is currently being worked on in the classroom. 

I typically get to her classroom around 10 AM so I don't know what they do at the very beginning of class but, when I get there the teacher has all of the students sitting on the floor at the front of the classroom. She explains to them what assignments they should do once they go back to their seats. Before she sends them back to their seats she will write each thing she explained on the board numbered 1-3 so that they can refer to the board if they forget what they should be doing.