Some Progress Made in Observation

Today, class was much like the other days in which I’ve observed. The students began their class period by taking their daily map quiz. In today’s map quiz, the students were introduced to a new concept involving directions. Instead of explaining the concept of east southeast, Mr. H (the teacher which I am observing) helped guide the students to understand it on their own by asking them what they knew about the four cardinal directions. He used this same strategy to help students learn about how to measure distances on a map. When I went around the room to help students with their quizzes, I was frustrated that some of the students either didn’t listen or didn’t understand what the class had just found together. I find it hard to believe that some seventh grade students don’t know the four cardinal directions, but I guess that’s possible. I also realized that I need to be more confident when answering students’ questions. For some reason, I’m always worried that I won’t be able to answer their question, but that hasn’t been a problem. The students spent the rest of the class period working on labeling their political and physical maps of South and Middle America. While they did this, I went around to help students, but I also looked for the student that I would like to profile. In doing so, I realized that I hadn’t learned all of the students names yet. I am going to solve this problem by either asking Mr. H for a seating chart or asking the students what their names are when I help them. The problem is that I observe a different class each week because of block scheduling. I’m hoping that by next week, I will have the names of the students in both classes memorized. I did, however, pick three boys and three girls that I thought would be good to observe for my profile. Mr. H agreed with two of my selections, so I am going to decide between the two of them and e-mail him tomorrow. I feel as though I should choose a girl because I think that she would open up to me more than a boy would, but I could be wrong. I’m going to look over the assignment again and see which student would best help me. On a more positive note, the students were pretty well behaved today and I don’t hate working with junior high school students like I did last week. Once again, I’m starting to think that it wouldn’t be that bad to teach in the junior high rather than in an elementary school. I’m still trying to get more involved in the classroom, and I’m going to talk to the teacher about that on Wednesday. Hopefully I’ll be able to teach or assist in teaching some mini-lessons soon. I just don’t want to interrupt his class because I know that I’m very fortunate for him to take time out of his day to give me the opportunity to observe his classroom. On a final note, I’m interested to see how the first literature circle goes tomorrow. I have no idea how to structure our presentation, which is in less than a month!