Reflect on your classroom observation
1.) Describe effective management strategies you observed for opening a lesson, applied during a lesson, and for lesson closure.
2.) Name 3 common transitions you observed and how did the teacher handle those.
3.) Describe a strategy that you observed and may apply to your classroom.
1.) I observed at Tanana Middle School. My teacher I am observing is Laverene Haakanson for middle school English. She applied numerous classroom management strategies when I observed her classroom. The students were asked to review poems and then discuss them in groups/units. The students were also asked to review the poems from an abstract and literal sense. Haakanson was good about addressing students that were becoming distracting, and the classroom was a bit rowdy since they all had candy from Halloween in their pockets. She established her rules about no candy or phones during the activity right away. She also addressed specific individuals on and off who were becoming distractions to the class “___ please stop tapping your pencil” and “__let’s stay on task” She was also very good about encouraging answers from students and allowing all students to contribute to the discussion. The closing part of the lesson was a bit of a review of what the students discovered in the poems they read in general or what their peers found that they did not. Students also had assigned seats and were reminded of this.
2.) Entering the classroom: Haakanson stands at the door and greets her students with a classroom contract, this is a task for students to do as soon as they sit down in their assigned seats. Bathroom pass: The students had to ask her before using the restroom, and then take a hallpass to do so. Tardy student: Haakanson would ask for a tardy slip, if there wasn’t one she explained that they would be marked as tardy but wouldn’t focus on it for too long, as to not distract from the lesson.
3.) I enjoyed how Haakanson walks around the room and makes her presence known. She is active and lets the students know that she is in charge. This was nice. I want to achieve this when I have my own classroom.