CO #2

Classroom Observation: Sana McHarek

Date: September 27, 2017

Reading 4A

Presentation: Class began by reviewing a comprehension quiz students had done last class on the article they are currently reading, about lightening in Florida. This article, and all articles in the class, are longform articles meant to be discussed in stages over several days. Today's stage of reading is post-reading. Sana introduces the outline note-taking method and tasks students to go in and fill in an outline of the article. Then Sana segued into literary devices, including metaphor, simile, and finally, onomatopoeia. She wrote two metaphors on the board ("he is a shining star" and "the world is a stage") and asked students what made them metaphors, and what each metaphor meant. She then did the same with simile. For onomatopoeia, she used the title of the article which was onomatopoeic, and spends some time helping students understand and pronounce this difficult term. She asks students why they might use this technique, and presents several examples which she asks the class to try and figure out, using words like "buzz", " thump", and "rustle". The last few minutes of class are used to go over new vocab words: "Buoyed", "Peculiar", and "Broundbreaking".

Classroom Management: The vibe of the class was fairly lax, and Sana was not especially strict with her students, which may be to the benefit of a class like this. However, she did have to get a bit pushy about students actually doing group work; when tasked to discuss in pairs, students tended to read individually and do little or not discussion. When this occurred, Sana simply reoriented her approach, and began calling on students and making it a whole class activity.

Materials: Projector, textbook, whiteboard.

Student Participation: Sana called on students at random with high frequency, but would also ask an open question for any student to volunteer to answer frequently, in order to check comprehension and move the lesson along.

Feedback Provided: Sana's feedback is always positive, and even when a student gave a blatantly wrong answer, she was able to spin it in such a way that it never seemed like she was admonishing the student when she provided a correction; she was always encouraging them.

Lessons on Teaching: A big lesson was on positivity and enthusiasm from the teacher. Students often would give blatantly wrong answers, or be so uncertain that they freeze up and don't respond. Sana always encourages these students and never admonishes them, and always maintains enthusiasm even when students aren't quite responding.