My Experience Observing a Classroom

As I stated in my first post, during my fall semester of my senior year of high school, I spent three days a week observing a second grade classroom. Preparing to begin observation hours once again this week has prompted me to look back on the experience I had. When I first walked into the classroom I was a little intimidated. The closest I had ever come to observing a classroom was going to one of my former teacher's classrooms for a career shadow day. As soon as I got into the classroom, the teacher I was working with introduced herself and then brought the students over to the rocking chair to introduce me. It was a scary but exciting experience to see all of the kids sitting down with their attention on me. During the first few weeks, I spent most of my time walking around to see what the students were working on and sat in on small reading groups that their teacher led. While some students were working in small groups with the teacher, others were working on their free writing. When they finished their free writing, they went on to work on free reading. I found the categories of reading levels to be very interesting. Each book was given a letter from A to Z, with the easier books labeled A, increasing in difficulty to Z. The students knew what letter they were able to read up to, and they could go over to the window and choose a book from their letter bin. This system allowed the students to work independently. Many times, the students would read books related to important upcoming holidays and then can write a reflection on them. Over time, I received more responsibilities in the classroom. I worked with students on their writing, listened to them read, and led a small reading group. Later in the semester, I was assigned to create a lesson plan for the entire class. Since it was close to Halloween, I made Halloween the subject of my lesson. I began by reading a story about student who had an embarrassing experience by switching his Halloween costume with his sister. Throughout the story, I would stop and ask the students what was going on in the story and how the characters were feeling to help them to better understand the story. After the story was over, I asked the students to write a sentence about what they were going to be for Halloween and draw a picture to accompany it. After the students completed it, I put them all on the classroom's bulletin board. Towards the end of the semester, I spent two full days at the school in order to have some sort of understanding of what the life of a teacher is like. Both days were so much fun, but also a lot of work. I never knew how much teaching required energy, and I went home both days exhausted. Looking back on my experience, I am so grateful to have had the opportunity. Observing my future career only strengthened my aspirations to become a teacher. I can't wait to begin my observation hours again this week.