Field Report and Interview One

 
The class and cooperating teacher I observed was at Franklin elementary school. The

class was a 3rd grade classroom. During my observation, I noticed the cooperating teacher using

strategies to grab and hold students’ attention. During the morning, she makes sure each student

gets breakfast, eats, and gets their talking out so they are ready to listen. Each morning the

teacher does a read aloud and during the read aloud, if she notices the children getting bored and

falling asleep, she will get the students up and moving. Another way the cooperating teacher

grabs student’s attention is raising her hand and waiting till all students copy by raising their

hands and are silent. The teacher during lessons, if the class starts getting rowdy, she will sit and

wait patiently till all students quiet down again. The cooperating teacher, if students are working

in groups or individually, she will set timers so students can organize themselves and get their

work done during the assigned time. The cooperating teacher mentioned she likes using non-

intrusive strategies to grab and hold students' attention with the raising hand or sitting silently.

She prefers not to do the hand clapping or doing the riddles to get the class attention. 

During my observation, I noticed that the cooperating teacher has strategies to help

students remember information and convert it to long-term memory. With ELA, the class hears

the information about three times in different ways. For example, the students will hear a story

by a recording, by the teacher reading out loud, then hearing the story as the children in the class

read it out loud. The students will hear the story approximately three times and will be able to

answer follow up questions. Another way cooperating teacher helps students retain information

and store it in their long term memory is by asking many questions. The teacher will do check

points and ask questions that review what was previously discussed. Along with this she also

makes sure she reviews topics of the previous day before starting a new topic on the new day.
During discussions, the cooperating teacher will find opportunities to relate information to the

students’ lives to help convert information into long term memory. For example, students are

learning about measurements, the teacher will relate measurements to objects students can relate

to. 

During my observation, I noticed some misconception students had related to the two

subjects that I observed. In the math class, the students have been learning about measurements.

The students appeared to get concepts confused with what they may have heard outside of the

classroom. They are learning the units of measurement and the students confused the units with

measurements from the metric system. The students have experiences and what they have

learned outside of the classroom. The students speak of what their family has taught them or

what they have compared to their personal life. From observation, common misconceptions

appear to be from students' knowledge on something based on personal experiences or what they

learned outside of the class which can be hard for teachers to correct based on information in

their lesson plan. The cooperating teacher has strategies to help correct students' misconceptions.

The first is having students think individually, then in groups, then respond out loud. Having this

communication within the class helps students hear other thoughts before students say their

thought process aloud. Another is the cooperating teacher asking questions and having students

explain their answers out loud. Doing this helps the students understand their thought process

and help them notice if they may have said something incorrect. Overall, the teacher uses

questioning a lot in the classroom. 

During my observation, I have noticed most of the students engaging in learning. I have

noticed students being engaged as many of them are raising their hands to answer questions and

are wanting to answer whatever is being asked. I have noticed students are engaged in learning
as there are many students who ask additional questions that are relevant to the topic and extend

the conversation with the teacher. Students are engaged in learning in the class that I observe as

they are turning in work completed and on time and they follow the rules that the cooperating

teacher has laid out. Students' eyes follow the teacher during the lessons, with an occasional

student who is not paying attention or is falling asleep. Many students during discussion are

eager to place their input in whichever topic is being discussed. If the students are released into

individual workstations, they can repeat what they are supposed to do within the groups and they

then go ahead and follow through with what they had said. Many of the students in the class I

observed were engaged in the learning and were eager to learn more.