Anecdotal Record Practice

Field Report #4: Anecdotal Record Practice

Ashley Hill

Tarrant County College

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The required student observation was conducted within the Northwest Independent

School District at V.R. Eaton High School in Haslet, Texas. The four-hour block of classroom

observations was held in Mrs. Boltons classroom, 10-12th grade family and community services

and child development.

Physical Space

Mrs. Boltons classroom is located in the A hall in the main school building. Her

classroom has a full wall of windows that allows you to see into the entire classroom from the

hall and vice versa. The students’ desks are set up like a college level lecture hall where the desks

are fixed seating and almost U-shaped. There are U-shaped rows with anywhere from six to ten

seats available on the rows. There was no certain theme to Mrs. Boltons classroom or

decorations. There were two bulletin boards that contained information about her students that

are interns and their pictures. There were two posters on the back wall that were over counseling

and mental health.

Mrs. Bolton desk was located in the back left corner of the room when you first entered.

The only computer was the one on her desk that accessed the multi-media for her classroom.

There is a large television at the front of the classroom that all the multi-media is delivered

through. The wall along the far side of the room away from the door has six large windows that

look out into a courtyard type of area. These windows let in a lot of natural light and because of

this most of the classroom lights are turned off. Mrs. Bolton did have some type of plugin going

that gave the classroom a nice smell.

Student Activities
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Mrs. Bolton started a new assignment with her students that would be a project and they

would be working on for the next four weeks. The project was to create a Non-profit of your

own. The first part of the project that she announced that they would start working on that day

was to come up with their own non-profit and fill in the pre-plan document that was available to

them. Within this document the students were to come up with the name for their organization,

why they picked that organization, a mission and vision statement, create a logo and contact

information. The materials used for this lesson were their Chromebook to access the pre-planned

document on canvas. This was an individual assignment, but Mrs. Bolton did say they could run

their ideas past their peers to get feedback. Ninety percent of the students were engaged in the

assignment and seemed pretty excited about it. What I found to be engaging about the lesson was

that Mrs. Bolton was teaching her students to help others in need and care for something that

they might not have otherwise even though about.

Classroom Management

During the task ninety-five percent of the students were engaged in the independent

assignment. Mrs. Bolton starts the class by going over the lesson and giving details on what to do

and what is required step by step then lets the students work independently. Mrs. Bolton is more

of a hands-off teacher and lets her students have free range and be themselves. She doesn’t

expect her classroom to be quiet and allows her students to have conversations, but if it gets too

loud or she knows that they are not on task she will say out loud to the class “y’all should be

typing or submitting something” to redirect them. A few girls were not on task and being kind of

loud and almost disruptive and Mrs. Bolton did not say anything to them. The teacher to student

engagement was very authentic as Mrs. Bolton would ask ho they were doing, how their

weekend was, or about something they had talked about in previous days that she was following
Anecdotal Record Practice

up on. The peer-to-peer interaction was good, and they all seemed to engage with each other and

help each other out even if it was lending a computer charger to another classmate who had

forgotten theirs.

Impressions

Mrs. Bolton didn’t seem to have much of a classroom management plan and was a very

hands-off teacher. I thought because of this, her classroom would probably be loud, chaotic, or

crazy, but it was the opposite. The students did talk, but rarely did they get loud or not stay on

task. You can clearly see that Mrs. Boltons students have a lot of respect for her and know how

to act in her classroom, even though she is not a strict teacher. I think it shows that if you treat

your students with respect and let them be themselves, they will show you the same respect.