Colavito McKie Educ. 421: Teaching Language Arts to Children Dr.

Nan Li, Instructor March 23, 2014 E/LA Lesson Observation #2 While observing Ms. Smiths third grade English/ Language Arts and Social Studies class on March 3, 2014, I could immediately tell that the students were engaged in learning. The classroom resembled a class with no behavior issues, active student participation, and meaningful instruction. The Instructional Outline stated the following: the Objectiveas it pertained to E/LA, focused on Writing Stems, Descriptive Writing, Writing Representations, and Main Ideas and Support Details; the Daily Reviewconsisted of morning writing and review of homework; the Anticipatory Setfocused on a Talk and Learn activity, geared towards encouraging students to share experiences; the Direct Instruction Activity included a teachermade anchor chart; the Guided Practice activitywas based on shared reading, with a cold passage; the Independent Practice focused on cooperative learning and again, the cold passage; and for closure, the teacher provided a clothesline activity. During the activity, students engaged in a choral reading activity related to identifying supporting ideas. Ms. Smith allowed students to work on finding details that support sentences independently. As one of the students read the passage, Ms. Smith asked the student to restate in his own words what the passage said. I thought Ms. Smiths specific approach to getting the student to speak up was unique, simply because she challenged the student to paraphrase

during what I thought to be a brief learning experience. Throughout the lesson, Ms. Smith constantly encouraged students to choose sentences that prevent the use of relevant details for omitting or using the process of elimination. I also noted that during instruction, Ms. Smith has a habit of constantly redirecting students actions and attention towards staying focused on instruction. Afterwards, students were instructed to take out their IPad and K-W-L charts. She informed students that If you dont have your K-W-L chart, put your IPad away. Ms. Smith instructed students to navigate their IPad, following her. (Students were instructed to type in Discuss Kids in the search bar of their IPad. Ms. Smith used multimedia equipment to show students the process of finding Discuss Kids and bookmarking the website. (Discuss Kids is a search engine appropriate for kids by age.) Following the IPad instructions, Ms. Smith read aloud the story My Mouth is a Volcano to students with regards to providing students with a context related to accurate directions and telling the truth. Before reading, she reiterated that students should always tell the truth, be grateful, and demonstrate responsibility. Later, Ms. Smith mentioned to students that she noticed that everyone didnt understand word stems. She provided examples on supporting details and main ideas. On the lesson featuring Main Idea and Supporting Details, Ms. Smith informed students that if a topic sentence is given, they must provide details to support the topic. She then asked students where does a topic sentence belong?