observation...

This past week, I went and did part of my hours for the end of semester paper. I went and observed in a high school language arts classroom. It was an interesting mix of classes because I observed an inclusion class, a gifted class, and a class that had a few students who were diagnosed with EBD. I really enjoyed my time there because I got the chance to experience how to teach the same material to three different levels of students. The students were just starting to read Of Mice and Men and the teacher started the class by asking the students what they knew about the Great Depression era in U.S. history. I really liked how she did that because it allowed the students to share what they did know, while also giving them valuable background information that they would need in order to better understand the setting and the situations of the characters. I was a little surprised that she had the same lesson plan for all three classes because I would have thought that they would change dramatically for each level of students. Overall, I learned a lot about how to manage classroom settings for different groups of students. While each class was remarkably different, it was still very important that each class covered around the same material. It was also surprising just how different each group was. Once class was loud and another was rather quiet. Each class had an entirely different personality, and I loved that the teacher that I was shadowing had a complete understanding of how to interact with each type of classroom. This helped the classroom to run in a much smoother manner because of her ability to be a different kind of teacher for each classroom, and at times a different teacher to individual students within the same class. This kind of variance was also helpful in the overall atmosphere.