I.

Observation #5
Instruction

II. Grade level and Subject Area

3rd and 4th grade, English Language Arts and Math

III. Setting
Self-contained classroom; Special Education; Elementary school; Urban setting; 1 educator and
2 para-educators; 12 students present

IV. Pre-Observation
Before observing an English Language Arts (ELA) lesson, I conducted research
revolving around instruction by having a conversation with my placement teacher in order to
gain a greater understanding of her prepping and planning requirements and styles. To begin, the
teacher is required to submit a week's worth of lesson plans every Monday by nine o’clock in the
morning. This keeps administration up-to-date with what the teachers are teaching and
establishes that every teacher is fulfilling their job duties by being prepared and organized. These
lesson plans are brief as a week's worth of lessons are able to fill a chart that fits on one page.
Every lesson plan is required to contain standards, objectives, lesson outline, assessment, and
accommodations and modifications. The teacher puts a variety of curriculum tools to use during
her lesson preparation process, such as the teacher manual. Due to being a dual-grade,
self-contained Special Education teacher, my teacher personally does not plan her lessons with
other teachers as her classroom differs slightly from the general education classrooms. Although
the teacher does a majority of her lesson planning and prepping on her own, the teacher does
keep in close communication with the same grade level teachers, which are the other third and
fourth grade teachers, to ensure that they all stay relatively on pace with each other and remain
on a similar timeline.

V. Data

English lesson
● To begin the Fundations English Language Arts lesson, the teacher engages students by
conducting the drill sound warm up on the carpet, which contains letter sounds, digraphs,
blends, glued sounds, and trick words. The teacher selects a student to be the drill sound
leader for the day and the student leads the class through the warm up by saying the
spelling, picture, and sound out loud on their own and then it is repeated by the class.
While this is occurring, the teacher also participates in saying the warm up out loud as
well as correcting or clarifying students when needed. Students maintain a high volume
through teacher support and have consistent accuracy all the way through the warm up.
 ● Next, the teacher reviews previously learned glued sounds to ensure that students are able
to recall the information and comprehend it fully. When review questions are
administered by the teacher, such as “How do we mark up a glued sound?”, not many
students' hands are raised, which causes the teacher to engage students in the group
discussion by cold-calling. The teacher uses a friendly tone to encourage students to
answer. The students who are called on without raising their hand state the correct answer
and are verbally praised by the teacher.
● Then, the teacher teaches the students four new glued sounds, which are -ank (ex. bank),
-ink (ex. pink), -onk (ex. honk), and -unk (ex. junk). The teacher engages students to
critically think by asking, “What other words end in _(glued sound)_”. Students were
able to recall words with these endings. When students were unable to come up with
more words, the teacher used verbal hints or hand gestures to guide them in guessing
another example. For instance, the teacher pretended to wash her hands for the students to
think of the word “sink”.
● To continue, the teacher instructed the students to return to their seats and open their
Octopus Fundations workbooks to page twelve where they would color in the new glued
sounds independently. The teacher and the teacher aides walk around the room to help
students find the correct page and to check over their work when they are done.
● After the Fundations lesson is complete, the teacher broke the class into groups to work
on miscellaneous work, such as pull-out groups with the teacher aides, finishing
assessments with the teacher, and individual thought-of-the-day work.

VI. Analysis
The lesson was differentiated to meet all the students needs by offering guidance when
students are instructed to brainstorm words that end in the new glued sounds, providing visuals
for students to easily see and connect the sounds to pictures and proper spellings, as well as the
lesson not containing the last part of the Fundations lesson, which is dictation on dry erase
boards as it is too challenging for this group of students to complete individually. Student
learning was evident through the active student participation during the drill sound warm up and
the lesson. Students, with either hands voluntarily raised or not raised, were able to correctly
recall the previous and new glued sounds as well as think of words that contained those sounds
in them. Additionally, the teacher is able to evaluate students' learning by looking at their
independent work in their booklets. Many of the other Fundations that I have either observed or
taught myself are of very similar format to this one, as it always contains a warm up, review, new
content, and independent work.

VII. Recommendations
Personally, I believe my placement teacher did a wonderful job of engaging students,
applying the proper means of accommodation and modification when prompted to, and
maintained a calm, encouraging, and clear voice and demeanor throughout the lesson. To help
 engage all students in wanting and feeling comfortable to participate and answer in group
discussions, I would recommend the teacher to implement modes of nonverbal group responses.
For example, after administering a question, the teacher will ask students to show a thumbs up or
thumbs down or even stand up or stay seated to reflect their answers and opinions, “This activity
provides a quick way to gauge if your students are comprehending a story or to test them on
different reading skills,” (Hurst, 2022). If certain students struggle to vocalize their answers
during a group discussion, implementing this tactic can be a great way to easily evaluate the
students comprehension of the new concepts without putting any students on the spot.

VIII. Post Observation

Through my observation of an English Language Arts (ELA) lesson, I have learned how
even the shortest and easiest prepared lesson still requires the teacher to implement
accommodations, modifications, and additional aid. A teacher needs to be ready to differentiate
or have variations of different methods and strategies to get the new concepts and teachings
across to all types of learners. As a teacher, having strong knowledge of each individual student
and what ways, styles, and approaches they learn best in is crucial for student success across the
board.

IX. Citations

Hurst, S. (2022, November 7). 14 activities that increase student engagement during reading

instruction. Reading Horizons. Retrieved May 1, 2023, from

https://readinghorizons.com/blog/14-classroom-activities-that-increase-student-engageme

nt/

X. Appendix: None used