My Second Day of Observation

Today was my second day visit my seventh grade geography class. Now that I was a little more comfortable with the teacher, students, and classroom, I was able to sit and observe the way in which the class is lead. The first ten minutes of my observation time is during supervised study. Each group of students rotates classrooms and teachers during this hour each week so that the teachers can make sure that the students have an understanding of the week's lessons and can go over important ideas that the students might have missed. I thought that this was a very good idea because it gives students the opportunity to focus on each subject rather than having to get a pass to visit a teacher whenever the student is having difficulty understanding a certain concept. I am also lucky because I can use this time to work with my student that I am going to profile (as soon as I can figure out who that student is going to be). I'm not sure who to choose- a boy or a girl, a student like me, or one completely different. I know I need to decide soon though. Each day at the beginning of class, the students begin with their daily map quiz. A certain place or landmark is written on the board, along with the latitude and logitude of that place. The students must find this on a map, and then must answer a question about it using their atlas. This exercise helps them to practice using latitude, as well as become familiar with atlases. Today, the students started a new chapter in the unit. Before reading the chapter, the teacher went over each main idea and asked the students what they knew about the topics. When students didn't know what a word or idea meant, such as ethnic diversity, they voluntarily looked it up in the glossary. In this example, the students were using their tools in order to find the answer, rather than the teacher giving them the answer. Instead of the teacher telling the students information about the region, he treats the class like more of a discussion group. He does so by asking the students questions and asks them to give examples to support their ideas. I felt that this helped them to understand the ideas better than just reading the chapter. After the class discussion, the students read the chapter and then answered questions that helped them to learn more about the regoin, as well as practice reading charts and graphs. I enjoyed the class discussion today and I hope that one day I can involve students in their learning as much as this teacher did.