Observation
Instructional Observation
Classroom: Mrs. Amato
Grade: 4th grade
Curriculum Area: Reading
What I notice
The teacher had the students meet at the
carpet in order to do the mini lesson. The
teacher starts out by asking a question and
having the students respond. After the mini
lesson the students are given an assignment or
question to answer in Google classroom. This is
to be done at their seats and independently.
While the students are working independently
the teacher pulls students to meet for small
group intervention. During reading instruction
the current read aloud was Bud, Not Buddy.
The teacher integrated social studies by
introducing the Great Depression and the topic
of Hoovervilles. They also discussed how the
Great Depression affected Bud’s decisions. The
kids also chose historical fiction topics to
research. The kids chose a topic to research
and completed an outline with questions to
guide them.
Objectives:
● discuss how 5 story elements
(character, setting, plot, problem,
resolution) contribute to historical
fiction
● sort vocabulary words according to
tenses, vowel patterns, and suffixes
● plan and organize own historical fiction
story
Observer: Alexandra Irvin
Date: 3/12/18
Time: 8:45-11:00 am
Thoughts, Questions, Connections to Methods
Classes
A connection to the methods class is seeing the
annotation strategies when working with a
reading passage. When given a passage the
students were expected to annotate while
reading to help with comprehension and
answering the questions. Another connection is
starting off the mini lesson by asking a
question in order to activate students prior
knowledge. The teacher also conducted writers
workshop in the last portion of the reading
block. The teacher constantly told the students
that their “pencils were never to stop moving
during this time”.
During this time I saw that the students
struggled with reading with stamina. This was
evident during independent reading and
through their reading passages.
What are ways to increase students reading
with stamina?
Reflection:
Each mini lesson is conducted by the teacher with the students sitting on the carpet in front of
the SMART board. The students worked a lot with talking about character traits with Cat in the Hat
and Bud, Not Buddy. After reading the book or chapter, the teacher would ask students to list the
character(s) character traits and examples of why. For Bud, Not Buddy the teacher wrote each character
on an anchor chart and they discussed that characters traits. While reading, the teacher would clarify
certain vocabulary words and stop to ask comprehension questions. The teacher also focused on the 5
story elements ( character, setting, plot, problem, and resolution) while teaching historical fiction.
The teacher taught the students the RUNNERS strategy to use while reading a passage and
answering questions. This mnemonic device stands for read the title, underline important words in
questions, number paragraphs, now read, eliminate wrong answers, reread text, select answers. The
students also had different ways to annotate while reading a passage. They put “?” for “I wonder”, “!”
for “Wow!”, a circle for a “new word”, a star for “important”, “S” for “summary statement”, and “C”
for “connection”.
The spelling instruction was based off the Words Their Way program. The students were placed
into groups based off the pattern of spelling they demonstrated and completed different activities based
off their spelling lists during the week. The schedule during the week consisted of meeting with the
teacher, sort & write in workbook, sort & write in notebook, rainbow/pyramid/story/search, and then a
quiz.
Social Studies was easily integrated into the reading instruction. In reading the students were
reading Bud, Not Buddy. The teacher introduced the Great Depression-the setting, time period, and the
effects. Also, introducing the topic of “Hoovervilles”. The teacher also discussed how the Great
Depression affected Bud’s decisions throughout the book. There was discussion about the stock market
crash, people losing jobs, people with jobs losing money, the dust bowl (drought, several states
affected, farmers), hungry, poor, most of America.
For writing the students finished up their informational piece by adding an introduction and
conclusion. The students were given a writing rubric once they were finished with their informational
piece in order to check that they had everything before it was graded. They then moved into researching
historical fiction topics. The students could choose from the Halifax explosion, Civil Rights Movement,
Hurricane Katrina, Pearl Harbor, or the sinking of the Titanic. The students received an outline that had
questions in order to guide their research. The questions included; when the event took place, where the
event took place, who was affected, how people involved felt, describe setting, and what the days,
months, and years were like following the event. It was very interesting to see the students engaged in
writers workshop and applying all of the skills that I have been learning about in the language arts
methods class.
At the beginning of the year the students were given a “Genre challenge”. This challenge
includes students reading 20 different genres by the end of the year. The students were given a sheet
with 17 genres to choose from and space to record their books.