Melinda Chapple

Introduction to Teaching 101

Field Observation
Part One:
Map of the Room:
Draw a map of the classroom.
How is it (or is it not) conducive to learning? What kind of a learning environment is it?
What "signs" do you see in the room that the subject is taught & learned here? Comfortable
learning environment? Seating arrangements? What does what you see in the room tell you about
what usually happens there?
The classroom is set up to fit the teaching style and process in the room. The tables are moved to
different locations depending on the time of day. In the mornings the students sit on the floor in
front of the smartboard to start the day. The tables are set up for station work which takes place
each morning. Then in the afternoon the desks are moved back to a semi-circle shape with 5-6
students at each. At each station area there is a railroad type sign explaining the purpose or
standard of each station. The classroom has a train/railroad theme to help flow with the stations.
The environment is very inviting and designed to strengthen the learning process. When the
students are sitting on the floor they can choose who they sit by but are asked to move if they
become disruptive to those around them. When sitting at the table in the afternoon they are
assigned a specific table and seat. During station time, the students are with different groups of
students depending on the station and skill set required. They students are very comfortable with
the learning environment. They work together and independently based on the station work. They
also understand the expectation of their behavior.
Safety Issues: Where is safety equipment in this room? (fire extinguishers, sinks eye wash, fire
blankets, hoods) As you look around the room what are the danger points in the room?
There are bathrooms and sinks in the classroom as well as a fire extinguisher. The dangerous
points in the room are on the other side of the room there is a door to go outside and there are
large concrete pillars that block the view of some areas of the room. This causes the teacher to
not always be able to see all the students all the time.


External Factors: How many interruptions during the class period? For what? By whom? How
much instructional time becomes "non-instructional" time? How does the teacher deal with these
unasked for interruptions?

During my observation time, there were 3 different interruptions that caused non-instructional
time. The first time was when I got to the classroom. The teacher quickly told the class why I was
there and they moved on causing only about 1 minute of down time. The second was when a
student had a behavioral issue and had to be removed from the room. The TA took over for the
station the teacher was teaching so there was little to no down time. The third time, the principal
entered the room and the students were asked to sit quietly while the teacher spoke with the
principal. The class lost about 3-4 minutes of instructional time.
"Discipline" What things does the teacher say or do to establish the "tone" of the classroom?
What factors contribute to making the classroom an effective learning environment? If an
"event" occurs -- how did it develop? What did the student(s) do? What did the teacher do? Not
do?
The teacher has a classroom management plan that the students are well aware of and
understand. The system is a color chart based on behavior both good and bad. The expectations
are given to the students daily as far as classroom behavior as well as station behavior based on
each activity at each station. The teacher is firm and direct but still caring and friendly. There
was an incident when a student began acting out and after being asked to follow the classroom
rules and not throw pencils he was removed from the situation. He was taken to the school office
and the counselor handled it from there.


Use of Questions: What types of questions were asked? By whom? Who responds? How often?
Were they of variable difficulty? What happens to the responses of the students? Responses of
the teacher?
Some uses of questions in instruction: recall data/facts; establish the student's background of
information; focusing instruction; summarizing; to arouse interest; to increase student
involvement; curiosity; to punish; to embarrass; to evaluate . Notice the use (or lack of use) of
"Wait Time" (see the paper by Mary Budd Rowe for an understanding of this)
All types of question are used in this classroom. Questions are asked of the students during
whole class work but the difficulty varies. The difficultly is based on skill so when the teacher
calls on students it is based on the skill level of that child. Most of the time when a question is
asked several students raise their hands even if they do not know the answer but the teacher will
call on the students best suited for the difficultly of the question. Sometimes the teacher asked the
students to answer another students question depending on the questions but primarily about
classroom behavior. Then once a week the students learn about one student so they ask that
student questions about themself. That specific student also gets to lead the discussion and call
on other students.
Questions are used for review of previous lessons, connecting them to current lessons, and about
current information. They seem to use a lot of questions to keep students attention and develop
their creative thinking.


Gender Issues in the Classroom: This observation form will help you become more aware of
gender and racial biases in the classroom. Most teachers are unaware of difference in treatment
of their students because they don't analyze what they say/do. Are all students treated equally?
Are there patterns to how a teacher interacts with the students? Is sexist or racist language used?
What effect might that have on students in the class?

I did not observe any bias or racial behaviors in this classroom. I did notice they try very hard to
make all the students feel comfortable and not taken out of class for help from another teacher.
For example, the ELL students are not taken from the classroom but instead the teacher joins
those students during station time in the classroom. The speech therapist does the same for those
students who need that extra help.


"Developmental flow" of the Lesson: What components are present, and what is their sequence
of occurrence? For example:
lesson usually begins with some sort of introduction, the aim of which frequently is to
motivate, or to "grab" the students' interest.
early in the lesson, one often attempts to provide a sense of direction; aims of the lesson;
focus for what will follow; objectives.
lesson activities are sometimes interspersed with "medial summaries"
at end of activities, does the teacher summarize (overall summary)?
does the teacher do something to find out how well students have learned the material of
the lesson? (lesson "appraisal")
assignments and/or "enrichments" are often used to round out the lesson; some teachers
use some sort of a "generalizing experience" which helps students to broaden their
understanding of a concept or skill.
The teacher explains the primary lesson on Monday reading a related story or watching a short
video or smartboard activity to grab the attention of the students. The stations are planned
around the lesson of the week. Those stations are explained to the students by giving them the
description of the activity, behavior expectation, and alternative activity if the finished early. The
summary is done on Friday and more crafty fun stations are done. Students are assessed with
individualized testing. During daily writing activities, the students are giving a small amount of
direction and then left to develop the idea and/or concept.

Interpersonal Interactions: What is the "flow" of classroom communication? Primarily from
teacher to students? How much communication moves in the reverse direction? How much exists
between students? Appropriateness" of that flow?
What is the role of the teacher in this lesson? (i.e., source of all the information? facilitator? or
what?) What evidence is there to indicate the degree to which students are actively involved in
learning?
The flow of the classroom communication is between teacher to students, student to teacher, and
student to student. They communicate with the teacher primarily during whole class discussions
but work together during station time. The teacher is considered a facilitator more than an
instructor. They are facilitating information and learning based on the students skill level. The
students are very active in discussion and reciting information to promote learning. Students are
able to move to and from stations with little to no instruction and are able to complete the
intended activity to their ability when the teachers are in the area to help when needed. The
students are very active and involved in their learning environment.


Type of Interaction: Lecture, lab or workshop, lecture-demonstration, supervised study,
discussion, review lesson are examples of categories (this is merely a broad classification;
therefore, not particularly useful, except to "label" the lesson).

The primary interaction was discussion, demonstration, and lab/station work. The students work
together and individually to complete activities and work with the teacher to have discussions
about lesson materials.
Use of Learning Aids and Manipulatives: audio-visual materials? Demonstration materials?
models? charts/maps? live/preserved specimens? How effective do the materials seem to be?
Evidence? How else might these materials have been used? Might some others have been used
with greater impact?
The learning environment is very hands-on so they have a lot of visual materials. There is a
large information board with the calendar, colors, letter and words of the week, days and
months, the number of days completed in school, and thermometer. This is a very visual area
that is reviewed daily. They also have stations that offer a variety of different activities such as
journals, laptops, worksheets, reading, coloring, science, math, and many others. There are
sometime activities that are partial lesson based but also producing products for other activities.
For example, they students had a station where they wrote that they were thankful for on a
feather. Once this was complete they were to color a picture for their Thanksgiving placemats.
They were able to practice writing and spelling but then moving on to complete another project
that needed done.


Use of Chalkboard/Overhead Projector: Legible? Visible? Make sense? What might have
been done differently? Does the teacher follow the 'rules & guidelines' suggested in the handout I
gave you?

The classroom I observed has a smartboard that is used for lesson for the whole class as well as
station work. It is very interactive and the students can use the board to write on as well as
reading a book or other games. I found this to be a great way to work with the students and
encourage discussions and interaction.
Handouts, Test, etc. How helpful are they? How do they contribute to learning? Legible?
Understandable? (get copies for possible future analysis)
There were very few handouts given to the students. Most of what they were doing was on a
laptop, smartboard, or in a journal.
Use of the Textbook: Does it "dominate" what happens in class? How is it used? For what
purposes? How often? How helpful is it? Do students appear to like it? Does the teacher share
strategies for success with students?
There were no textbooks used in the classroom I observed.


Assignments: When given? What? Why? What happens to it afterward? Clear purpose? How
does it relate to enhancing learning? Realistic expectations? Student reactions?

Primarily assignments are given as the station work or creative writing. They students handled
them well and if not completed they worked on them later in the day during free time. With
encouragement students worked hard to complete assignments so they could avoid working on
them during free time. They students take reading books home to read as homework.
Grading: How is it handled? Student reactions? How does the teacher feel about his/her grading
procedures?
Grading or assessing the students is done based on the required learning for Kindergarten. Each
student has a binder where their progress is monitored and recorded. Also individual testing is
completed using mobile device technology. The teacher would like to have more devices to
complete more testing.





OBSERVATION SHEET: USE OF LEARNING AIDS AND MANIPULATIVES
COURSE NAME: Letter Ii DATE: 11/11/2013
Are audio-visual materials used? How?
A smartboard is used to introduce the letter and sound. Covering how to write the letter and the
sounds it makes, then reading a story to reinforce the lesson. Then the smartboard was used to
explain the stations for the day, expected behavior, and alternative activities.
Are demonstrations done? When in the lesson? How easy are they to see? Do they help make
ideas clearer?
The teacher called on a student to demonstrate how to write the letters and others to help answer
questions in a game to help reinforce the lesson idea. Yes I think it was helpful to make the
lesson more clearly too all the students.
Are any models used?
No models were used.
Are charts/maps in evidence? Used to enhance the lesson?
No charts or maps were used.
Are there live/preserved specimens?
No there were no live or preserved specimens used.
How effective do the materials seem to be? What evidence do you have?
The students seemed to understand the lesson and were focused and engaged. I worked with the
students at the stations so I could see the understand they had of the lesson.
How else might these materials have been used? Might some others have been used with greater
impact?
I feel the process these teachers have in place is very effective for this class. The students are
engaged in the learning environment and seem to understand the lessons as they are presented.
Keep a list of all the learning aids you see being used
Smartboard (starfall.com, you tube videos, Leap frog videos)
Story books (Thanksgiving topic)
Laptops
Posters hanging around the room

POINTS TO PONDER:
1. List observations that lead you to think that the use of these teaching techniques with
learning aids was beneficial to the students: The teacher teaches the student Tucker Hand
Signing to help reinforce the sounds of the letters. This really helps them to learn and remember
the sounds.
2. List observations that caused you to think that the use of some or all of the learning aids may
not have been helpful: The smartboard can be difficult to work based on the touch screen and
could cause frustrations for the students.
3. Imagine yourself teaching the same lesson some time in the future. What would be different
and/or the same when YOU do the teaching?
I would use the smartboard in the same way to teach as a large or small group for reading,
writing, and letter sounds. I will not use it to play games without adult supervision. This would
help to reduce frustration.



OBSERVATION SHEET: USE OF QUESTIONS
PART ONE
INSTRUCTIONS: Make a list of all the questions a teacher asks in a 20 minute period. Try to
record them verbatim. Try to do this observation during a section of the lesson when the teacher
will be asking lots of questions. Do this observation before doing parts 2 & 3.
See hand written notes.
OBSERVATION SHEET: USE OF QUESTIONS
PART TWO
INSTRUCTIONS: To complete this exercise, you will need to observe the same teacher and the
same class during a 2-3 day interval. If possible, complete one set of observations in a high
school and another set in a middle school. [if you are teaching - audio tape yourself for 3
consecutive days and analyze the tape]
Make a seating chart for each class to be observed. Use the chart(s) to keep track of which
student(s) are called on. Simply tabulate the data for a given period of time (15 minutes for each
observation, for example) for each class, and then do the following:
1. Create a chart or some other informative way to display the data;
The students sit on the floor not in any specific order. They students who are called on are those
who are behaving appropriately and meet the difficultly level of the question.
2. Write a short summary of your observations; what patterns did you notice?
The primary things I observed were behavioral and difficulty. When the students were sitting
properly and following the behavior expectations they were called on to answer a questions. If
the student was not sitting appropriately or waving their arm in the air they were not called on.
The questions were varied in difficulty so all the students had an opportunity to answer one or
more.
3. List at least three (3) inferences based on your observations. Can you predict who will get
called upon for different types of questions?
The questions and lesson are based on the ability of the group it is being presented to not just
directly from a textbook. This gives all the students to opportunity to be involved in the
discussion and develop their skills. Students are also encouraged to follow the behavior
expectations by sitting quietly, listening, raising their hands and waiting to be called on, and not
just yelling out the answer. If there was a student who was not paying attention they might be
called on to help refocus the student. The students need open ended questions to help their
creative thinking. The teacher avoids giving examples so the students dont just choose one of
her ideas.

OBSERVATION SHEET: USE OF QUESTIONS
PART THREE
Instructions: Classroom questions can be categorized in a variety of ways and different types of
questions serve different goals. You will learn more about his during the course of the single
subject program. For now, consider just three fairly broad categories of questions: (1) those
which are knowledge-based, (2) those that deal with applications of knowledge, and (3) those
which require analysis. In this part of the observation assignment you are asked to keep track of
the types of questions asked during a given period of time -- a 15-20 minute segment of a lesson.
Simply tally the questions asked according to the three categories. [if you are teaching - audio
tape yourself for 3 consecutive days and analyze the tape]

TYPE OF QUESTION TALLY
Knowledge-based questions 13
Questions requiring applications
14
Questions requiring analysis 5
MAKING SENSE OF THE DATA:
Under what circumstances, and for what purposes/goals, might you, as a teacher, choose to use
questions of the following types:
Knowledge-based questions: To determine if the students understand the information they are
being taught in the lesson.
Questions requiring applications: To help the students understand to concept and how to apply
the knowledge.
Questions requiring analysis: To have students apply the knowledge and concepts themselves.