4.1 4 week middle school observation

 For my four week middle school observation I observed Mrs.Harber, who teaches fourth grade special education. 

For my first time going in to observe her she's going over how to convert yards into feet in the math textbook that the students and her have and asking the students questions to see if the students have been paying attention to her so far. 

Her classroom was really cozy but my favourite part of her classroom was the fact that she had a really comfy couch and lounge chair in the back of the class. Adding a couch and a lounge chair made the classroom feel more homey than the typical classroom, and made it feel like it would be a nice place to calm down and de-escalate. She also had a bunch of posters, but my favorite one was a ninja turtle long division sign. 

I really like how she used the strict but nice approach to teaching and communicating with her students, and how she would actually talk to me and give me pointers. at one point she told me that, "In the teacher world there is a lot of modifying and adjusting." and that made me realize that we can't always be in control, that we just have to modify our approach and adjust to life, inside and outside of school.

For my second observation Mrs.Harber said she had to go to a meeting so I actually ended up observing Mrs.Watson, who I observed before my four week observation began. Mrs.Watson also teaches special education but she teaches fifth grade instead of fourth and we ended up joining the fifth grade English teacher Mrs.Hall's class. Mrs.Hall and Mrs.Watson split the students up into two groups, Mrs.Hall had the independent group while Mrs.Watson had the dependent group. Mrs.Hall went over similes and metaphors and Mrs.Watson helped the dependent group, making sure they understood what was going on as well as making sure they did their work and copied all the notes Mrs.Hall told everyone to write down. Afterwards the students were tasked with splinting off and doing their work by themselves on their computers or read a book. 

I really liked how well Mrs.Watson and Mrs.Hall worked together and how they both always made sure everyone was paying attention and understanding what they are going over by asking questions about the lesson. 

 

For my third observation Mrs.Harber was back. she was pulling three students out at a time in order to gauge the students progress and understanding of the material. One of the students she pulled was tasked with finding the main idea of a passage about penguins. Another student is tasked with reading a series of words out loud then combining them into compound words. 

I like how she encourages her students by telling them that they can read, and to not be nervous because they are doing good. I also like how she speaks softly while doing so and uses positive reinforcement.